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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23599306">False Idol</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/outcharm/pseuds/outcharm'>outcharm</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gorillaz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Feels, Bisexual Male Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Character Study, Depression, Found Family, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smoking, Suicide Attempt, do ya thing, do ya thing house, no ships sorry, plastic beach</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:34:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>31,082</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23599306</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/outcharm/pseuds/outcharm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After Plastic Beach, there isn't much left for Murdoc besides substance abuse, guilt, and his band mates who want nothing more than to leave Gorillaz behind them. What happened in El Mañana and Plastic Beach, stays in El Mañana and Plastic Beach. Easier said than done.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Murdoc Niccals &amp; Cyborg Noodle, Murdoc Niccals &amp; Noodle, Murdoc Niccals &amp; Stuart "2D" Pot, Russel Hobbs &amp; Murdoc Niccals</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>88</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Aftermath</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span> 212 Wobble Street. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> What a stupid fucking name for a street - who’s brilliant idea was that? The nonces who control every aspect of a citizen’s life from their high chair in Parliament, or the Queen so never dies, like a cockroach? It sounds like it comes straight out of a children’s network the bastards at corporate air in the early hours of Saturday mornings. It sucks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Everything</span>
  </em>
  <span> about it </span>
  <em>
    <span>sucks; </span>
  </em>
  <span>the name sucks, the sickly polluted air sucks (almost as much as Plastic Beach, courtesy of London’s wonderful residents), and the people who live here </span>
  <em>
    <span>suck</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> They’re not only boring, as almost all people fail to entertain, but at night they have an incessant need to annoy </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> specifically. They’re all like ants; they follow the same predictable pattern, for the same predictable reasons, to live out their same typical, boring lives. Going to work. Catching the bus. Shopping for groceries and telling themselves no one will </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> notice if they get a gallon of ice cream and watch it fill their stomach like they’re in their third fucking trimester.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> People notice; people will </span>
  <em>
    <span>always</span>
  </em>
  <span> notice, they’re just too bloody polite to speak up. They speak up after midnight, voice their opinions, their wants, their needs clear as day. It’s mainly all drug deals; you stalk these pathetic earthlings from the comfort of your tower (bedroom),  where you try to convince yourself that it isn’t pathetic (it is), and where you try to shut up your father’s poltergeist calling you a failure (it never works. He’ll always stick to you like hot glue.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, you continue to watch the ants go to school, to work, food shopping, and home, over and over again. The world’s most twisted clock. And yet, part of you can see yourself living their lives, coming home to a loving wife, to obnoxiously bright eyed children who adore your every move (until they turn 12, that is), to a bed that doesn’t feel alienating; and a part of you thinks you might have been happy if you were that </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Stupid. Everyone is always stupid, everything will continue to be stupid, and music has betrayed you too, because now </span>
  <em>
    <span>that’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> stupid. You crave something intellectual to stimulate you, you always have, but now it’s like finding an oasis in the desert. (Or an Oasis reunion tour. It will never happen.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The only thing that remains not completely stupid is the bottle of rum tucked away  shamefully in the corner of your cesspool excuse for a bedroom, glimmering, promising a better day if you momentarily quelm the monster inside you with a drop of its taste. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Rum is a goddamn liar (just like you) but at least she’s a beautiful temptress. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You’re not beautiful though. Never have been. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You have become what everything else has always been; </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>------</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Self loathing is a practice you are quite used to. It’s ingrained in your life the moment you were conceived; it’s instinctual, but learned. It’s like how children go to church, just because their parents want them to, and they don’t know any better to tell them to fuck off yet. So, from an early age you’d taken up narcissism as a new drug, sorting through the dumpsters of your mind to find one mildly good thing about yourself to over exaggerate, like a prostitute desperate for a line of coke. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Self loathing, drugs, and messy sex has always been your favorite ways to practice religion. If only one of that holy trinity was missing, it’d all come crumbling down like a cookie. And it has. It has warped reality through a goddamn blender. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You’re not quite sure what’s real and what’s not real anymore. On Plastic Beach it was worse, days mixing with nights, faces mixing with inanimate objects, wants mixed with needs. This is almost </span>
  <em>
    <span>worse</span>
  </em>
  <span>; now you see your almost murdered guitarist (daughter) every day, and you spoil like milk even </span>
  <em>
    <span>more</span>
  </em>
  <span> alone in your grimy basement, with even </span>
  <em>
    <span>more</span>
  </em>
  <span> time to loathe and pick at yourself like a black colored scab. This scar will never heal, even if you were to try and stop. There will always be remnants of white around the semi healed wound, and it will always wait for you to pick again. You’ve become one of the things you hated most about the ant people outside your house; predictable. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The people closest to you (or rather, who you held against their will to stay close to you) act like you’re a goddamn ghost on the best days; on the worst, you’re nothing but gum on the bottom of their shoes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Maybe things would be better if life wasn’t so </span>
  <em>
    <span>boring</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It would ease the pain a little bit, only momentarily, like rum, but more long lasting. If you had more ladies, more money, more Gorillaz tours to do, life would be tolerable, hell, </span>
  <em>
    <span>great</span>
  </em>
  <span> again. Demon Days was the happiest you’ve ever been,because you had gotten what you’ve always wanted; the best band in the fucking world. But even that wasn’t enough to satisfy the insatiable beast inside you. You always wanted </span>
  <em>
    <span>more</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Murdoc, and look where it had gotten you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On an island where seagulls screamed for mercy as black air filled their lungs. Where your traumatized bandmate screamed for mercy below the ocean, for no one to hear or care besides his malicious captor (you). A gas masked figure stalked your every move, him, the predator, you, the pathetic prey desperately crawling away from traps laid at every corner. Blown up bimbo dolls were your only comfort, their plastic tits scratching against your cock as you thrust into them. You pretended they felt like proper breasts, soft and dough like in your hands. You pretended they were Debby Harry’s breasts, Kate Bush’s breasts, Madonna’s breasts, </span>
  <em>
    <span>any</span>
  </em>
  <span> woman’s breasts. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whenever the thought of a man creeped into your mind you’d slam that case shut. It had never bothered you when you were out on tour, when the ground you walked on became holy. You had felt good enough to shag a bloke, and enjoyed it thoroughly. When the ground you walked on was coral pink plastic, the homophobic slurs hurled at you like bombs in your youth bombarded into your head and kept your body in place. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Your fingers were often riddled with fertile, red blisters from the scrapped pieces of music you’d tear apart like a feral cat in frustration. You were never sober; maybe once or twice, but it’s easier to die a slow death drunk or high than painfully aware of oneself’s connection to the universe. Plastic Beach was when creativity flooded your head like a hose (occasionally), when the music finally clicked like a key in an ancient locked chest. Music made sense, had </span>
  <em>
    <span>meaning</span>
  </em>
  <span> again. So many lies you have told have become truths, indistinguishable from the reality of your life. Music was never one of them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was always blistering hot, or hypothermia inducing cold on the island. There was never a balance between the two climates, which reminded you a bit of a seesaw. It made you feel sickly all over; a disease had already inhabited you since youth, but it only strengthened the pile of seeping garbage you had begrudgingly called Home. You’d vomit the disease up every miserable morning, hear it taunting you through your ear each day, and see the disease screaming at you each night when you lied in bed, desperate for it all to stop. Sometimes, it was so bloody close that you could taste the color of it. You’d become the beggar again, just like on the stage where you were forced to dance for the entertainment of people who relished in your humiliation. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Toss and turn. Toss and turn. Just like the ships approaching the shore, cheering for your death, your crucifixion hanging on the staff of their battleship. First, they hoped a bullet would strike you like your father’s palm always did, and it wouldn’t kill you right away; the blood would ooze and drip like melting ice cream down your thigh. The more agonizing the suffering was, the better. You probably deserved to have your corpse feasted upon by crows, your body picked and plucked like a 5 star meal. </span>
</p><p> </p><p> <span>You probably deserved something crueler; maybe your dad was actually the boogieman, or maybe Noodle was. And they’d both smirk and laugh like a baby playing peekaboo while you bled out on the crusty wooden floors.They’d bathe in your blood, fill up their champagne glasses with it and have a toast for the occasion. It would be funny. Amusing. Even better if 2D stood there to witness it all; what comes around goes around, right? A Shakesperian tragedy was your preferred method to go out. You couldn’t die without putting on a show.</span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everyone was hoping you’d kick the bucket; some are just louder at voicing their hatred than others.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> So now, you rest in your laughably cheap IKEA double bed, struggling to think of the best next Gorillaz thing that would restore you to your former Glory (if that ever </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> Glory). </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Of course, life on 212 Wobble Street is better than an existence on Point Nemo, Plastic Beach. It’s the little things that stick out to you like colored frogs in a humid rainforest. No longer are you doomed to consume scraps of coconuts and countless amounts of canned tuna, let us begin the days of ordering Chinese food and not so freshly baked pizza. You could actually go outside now and </span>
  <em>
    <span>enjoy</span>
  </em>
  <span> it — the breeze caressing your arms, the sun peaking through the clouds on a drizzly day, and the birds greeting you with pleasant chirps. You have a new appreciation for London weather that you’ve never had before, a new appreciation for the abundance of life around you, and the sights of beautiful women and men you’ve been denied for so long. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>However, all you can do is look and fantasize of these sexy creatures in the late evening. They scream your name in euphoria, praise their God (you), and beg to taste the snake between your legs. It seems no one is willing to jump your bones anymore the way birds and blokes gathered around you, like dogs around meat. You miss your early forties, and how those years blessed you with the best sex of your life. Satan was your greatest ally in achieving happiness (or the closest thing to it); now, you had lost him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You’re always thinking of the things you’ve lost, the things you can’t have, and try your best to repress the terrible crimes you’ve committed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You’re so </span>
  <em>
    <span>bored</span>
  </em>
  <span> with it all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You still strangle your sheets in your desperate grasp and wake up in cold sweats, heart thumping faster than Russel’s drums. You still feel empty, hollow, a shell of the person you convinced yourself you were, long ago when you had been left without a home after one particular fight with Sebastian. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That fight started when he had commanded you to lick his boot, in front of the ugliest, most horrid people you have ever seen, otherwise known as Sebastian Niccals’ gang of Undesirables. It was a party game for him, and these Undesirables stared into you like eager daggers, the same ones used on Julius Caesar. Sebastian demanded a show; he would get one. He was always a ruthless dictator, but the problem was that you had just placed your life in the sinful hands of Satan. So, you got cocky and defied your oppressor, told him no. He had threatened your pride, something you wanted to preserve more than life itself, for the last time (as you wanted to think). </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Silence in the parlor lingered the way it does before a bar fight, and it practically was one. It was worth it though, you believed, when blood oozed down your nose, chin, black v-neck, before you crawled out onto the streets like a toddler. Your legs,arms, and hands begged for mercy. Your head knew better than that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The night wind cracked at your skin like a whip as you sat in one of Stoke on Trent’s many alleys riddled with homeless addicts that would sell their first born for a line. That same disease you’ve always felt in worse moments devouring you alive. It was a king, and you were the roasted pig cooked to perfection on its dinner plate. You wouldn’t last alone on this grand dining table; it was never in your DNA. </span>
</p><p> </p><p> <span>So, you crawled back to your father’s home, relief crashing onto you like a wave when you found Dad and his Undesirables collapsed onto the floor, now possessed by the coma only surplus amounts of alcohol gave. They were in a deep sleep now; unlike Juliet, you’d hope they would never see the sun rise again. </span></p><p> </p><p> <span>For the first time ever, you prayed that night. You collapsed to your knees and gave it all to Satan, praised him, thanked him, worshipped him, clutching your reverse rosary like a ship’s life saver. You stayed silent as a Monk after your devout worship to this new God, your breath the only music left in that damned to Hell flat. There was silence. And then, there was light. Lightning struck Stoke’s muddy streets, and for once in your short lived life, you had been positive of something; Satan had heard your prayers, and had answered. He hurled the lighting bolt from the fiery pits of Hell himself. </span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The divine touch of something </span>
  <em>
    <span>sinister</span>
  </em>
  <span> coursed through your veins with the speed of a bullet train. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That night, you had become a God. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> On 212 Wobble Street, you stare at the stranger in the mirror. You see nothing but a False Idol. </span>
</p><p>-----</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Noodle is either entirely apathetic, or carries a silent flaming sword of rage with her at all times. The sword does not sway, but is as still as the ocean waiting for a storm. Her lips are always in a firm, grin line, and you fear what will happen when the seams are pulled to make the hate spill from her mouth. She sits quietly in the cluttered kitchen, her eyes distant. She’s a statue, a Leonardo Davinci marble sculpture. Silent, elegant. Always lost in thought. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Her mahogany eyes do not move from the wood on the table when you open the fridge for another bottle of rum. They do not move when you begin to craft her favorite tea with more effort than you’d ever given before. They do not move when you place the freshly brewed beverage on the table. She’s as stubborn as a mule. No, even worse, as stubborn as </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What does this tea symbolize? Is it your newest pathetic peace offering of the week for her loss of regular adolescence, or is it another weak white flag that flies wearily on display? It’s 1pm; too bloody early to tell. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You at least hope she would give you the satisfaction of a grimace. Like she’s tasting a horrible sour candy. Even if your existence causes disgust, at least it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You’re begging for breadcrumbs like some measly little rat, and you’re not entirely sure if you’re any different from some abominable rodent. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Noodle remains a marble masterpiece. Silent, elegant. You missed hearing her voice; whether it was seething in anger or laughing hysterically, you yearn for it the way alcoholics yearn for the scent of Fireball. You miss when it was easy to make her laugh; her giggles that erupted into hollering always reminded you of the few sunny days in your childhood, or the excitement that would consume little Murdoc when he heard the signature jingle of the ice cream truck. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> And just like the ice cream truck jingle, you haven’t heard it in a </span>
  <em>
    <span>long</span>
  </em>
  <span>, long time. There are no more sunshiny days, and no more do you witness the laughter of your daughter. You never met the criteria for a parent, but Sweet </span>
  <em>
    <span>Satan</span>
  </em>
  <span>, did you fuck up your once chance at it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The last resort to get any sort of acknowledgement is pissing her off, which will be the thing that finally crumbles the statue titled Noodle. If she gets angry, it means she still cares about you, about your pathetic excuse for a loving relationship. For one to be royally pissed off, it means one must care about what was said, and who said it. Honestly, her smashing various trinkets across the house like an angry tyrant would be a victory in your book. You would let her carnage Gorillaz’ Grammy just for her to look at you, no matter how hateful the look is. If she does nothing, </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> would do a number on you. You could imagine how deliriously painful it would be, like swallowing a sword and letting it slice your intestines, blood swelling so much inside you it implodes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Risk has always been a game that you enjoyed playing. Clasping the dice and wishing for the best is like the exhilarating rush one gets after a rollercoaster. So, you throw the dice and leave it to the fates to decide what will come next. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ungrateful</span>
  </em>
  <span>”, you spit with the venom of a snake, your mouth snapping open and shut as the poison flows out from its chalice. Your heart accelerates with the ferocity of fire, the kind of flame kindled from thunder that crackles and whips its head savagely when it meets the Earth. The kitchen is now dense with brewing chaos, like the building magma resting in a volcano awakening to life. Her eyes spark like a match; it’s quick, but noticeable enough to make an impact. You were just the logs in the campfire, waiting for that fire Noodle possesses to engulf you whole. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Burning alive in the fire of your daughter is not only a death you want, but deserve. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You’ve always been a masochist. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She blinks, slowly, and you know it’s her replaying all the possibilities, all the outcomes, everything she could do to ruin your day, the rest of your life, and then, she opens them back up. She’s done reviewing the library of her expansive mind, she’s touched every corner and every book underneath her fingertips in mere seconds. You wonder if you gave her a paper cut, and the excitement of a good fight kindles up in your gut. Like a centuries old audience member anticipating Shakespeare’s new play. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Let the show begin, you almost snicker, the nicotine in your mouth oozing out with an expecting exhale. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> There’s a sharp, screeching sound of her chair being moved back that sounds exactly like dragging your nails down a chalkboard. The audience member in you cheers hearing it; you don’t even wince at the screaming of the cheap IKEA chair. She stands ominous and still, her characteristically thick black bangs covering her eyes. A Grim Reaper type of essence surrounds her body and settles the air like pollution. You shiver knowing that far after this verbal bloody battle, the words will stick in this </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid</span>
  </em>
  <span> kitchen like radiation fallout. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Instead, there is nothing. Noodle stalks away silently, carrying her deadliest weapon, her tongue, with her. The wooden stairs groan and beg for mercy as your daughter steps upon them. For a moment, they feel the burden that she carries. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something inside you cracks. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>-----</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You need a cigarette. You always need a cigarette. Something to chew on, ponder on, and a cigarette will clear up your mind, but drown your lungs in clouds of black. They’re used to it by now, your shriveled raisin lungs (they’re not yours. They’re 2-D’s). Briefly, guilt seeps into your belly, and you shut it back up with your old mate Nicotine.  Your sickly mouth is also used to his taste by now, and your throat lathers up the sweet scald he brings to you like a dog. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Nicotine, your best shag, next to lovely lady Rum of course. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Your room reeks of him. It always has, but after spending 2 years in isolation, your nose has grown especially sensitive to anything that doesn’t smell of seawater, your recording studio, and gunpowder. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You had pipes that were fun to smoke. You’d play out your silly fantasies of being a Bond villain, devilishly handsome, ladies man, and wit sharper than a razor (at least you have one of those things). You’d cackle wickedly, whisper some asinine line when you’ve finally bested the pathetic sod of a spy, and would picture flying away in your jet black helicopter. Your classic character moment was taking a puff of your magnificent pipe, and letting it flow from your face like the obnoxious prick you are. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Nothing beats a good fag, though. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You would suck your imagination dry through a cheap plastic straw. You fulfilled your destiny by becoming your own parasite. When there were no more narcissistic delusions to fabricate in your head, you’d search for comfort by tugging off your belt and let your hand do the work for you. Lust always trumps boredom in your own twisted version of Rock Paper Scissors. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Your cigarette is now burnt out, limp in your fingers. Nicotine has become a wilted flower. Like a fool who’s fallen in love with a prostitute, you keep going back to Him. He’s always there if you pay for him. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>-----</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You had rolled the dice, and you had gotten semi lucky. Sloppily shoving your tongue, arguably your greatest asset, into </span>
  <em>
    <span>anyone’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> mouth was already enjoyable as winning £20 from a scratch off card. However, considering the 2 year long dry spell you had in isolation (not including the weeks at 212 Wobble Street), feeling plump, red lips swell and bleed from your devilish bites now feels like winning the fucking lottery. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You had gone to some tacky standard bar that </span>
  <em>
    <span>reeked</span>
  </em>
  <span> of London’s cockiness and filth. Red infrared lights flashed up and down to the point where it made you nauseous just to look at it for procrastination purposes. You’d always been confident in your ability to entice any lucky patron out of their head and into your pants, but even the best rock stars falter in their abilities when out of their routine of glory. You had fallen out of grace, out of happiness, and worst of all, out of sex. Getting back into the swing of things is a challenge for anyone; but you remind the doubt inhabiting your throat that aren’t just </span>
  <em>
    <span>anyone</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you are Murdoc Faust </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fucking</span>
  </em>
  <span> Niccals. And you had been </span>
  <em>
    <span>robbed</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Robbed of anything that wasn’t misery or your own hand to pleasure yourself; tonight, you’d throw your line into the pond of London and expertly catch a pretty, young koi fish to bite. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> It didn’t take long for you to find a bird who recognized you - they always have the same childlike wonderment in their eyes, cotton candy blush blossoming on their cheeks, and they text anyone they can to let them know Murdoc Niccals, bassist of Gorillaz, is making his way to the seat next to her like a wolf to a rabbit. Unfortunately, there weren't nearly enough of these girls in this bar.  It’s a Tuesday night, but your cock was like a desperate soldier searching for sleep; it didn’t care what time, day, or where it could get it. You needed someone now, and although you enjoy chasing a challenge, you just aren’t willing to debate with a stubborn slag. She’s eager, she’s young, and her knickers are probably soaked at the thought of you coating her insides with your liquid lust. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’s goth and chubby. Those birds always flock to you like you’re an unlimited source of bread, wanting to taste you and devour you in their mouths within seconds. You think about bending her over and feeling the supple, fat flesh of her arse in your stern grip, slapping it and kneading it like bread in your sinful palms. She knows what you’re thinking, she’s only seen that look twice in her life, and she’s instantly flattered. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> “I l-loved you in Feel Good Inc.” Sparks dance in your groin, your cock rising to life like a vampire after a day's rest, slowly, gracefully, yet demanding attention. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>  “Of </span>
  <em>
    <span>course </span>
  </em>
  <span>you did, my little Koi.” </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span> From that second, time moves quickly like pressing fast forward on a TV remote. She’s wrapped around your finger like a tight, pink ribbon when you slam her into the dingy bathroom stall. You dig your nails into her thighs, becoming a tyrant in this dump, possessing every part of her without remorse, feeling like an atom bomb when you hear the bashful girl from moments ago transform into a slag. Although at this time in life you would prefer laying down with a cock up your arse (plastic or real), you can’t deny how good it feels to have this much power flowing through your lucrative bloodstream, from head to toes. Shots of adrenaline to your pride has always been your choice of drug. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> She moves like a flowing river against you, fluid, fast, and wet on your fingertips. Sex is nature’s course, what you were bred to do, an innate behavior in the Niccals bloodline. She shrieks in delight when you rip her skirt in the process of getting it off. You see the skirt’s tear pattern matching the claws of your hands- immense satisfaction lights you up like a Christmas tree. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Before you know it, you’re inside her, groaning when you feel the velvety interior acts as a warm bath to your groin. Molten lava explodes inside you when you bottom out in her, where it’s deep and wet and forgiving. You’ve reclaimed your skill, your pleasure, and your pride when she clamps down on you like a mousetrap. You pump fast, in and out, in and out, greedily taking her and collecting her moans in your mind for a later wank bank date. More moans and groans fill this empty, </span>
  <em>
    <span>disgusting</span>
  </em>
  <span> bathroom, and the dictator in you commands more from her. Let </span>
  <em>
    <span>everyone </span>
  </em>
  <span>know who’s fucking her, and let the world know who owns her body. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> It feels good to own someone again. You don’t consider the fact that it’s fleeting, not when it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span> good. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You’re close, close, </span>
  <em>
    <span>closer</span>
  </em>
  <span> to reaching your peak, and the tiny moaning of the word “daddy” from the girl underneath you finished you off. Everything goes white when you taste the closest thing you’ll ever get to Heaven, and then shame slaps you across the face with the force of Satan, angry and disgusted with your actions. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You set her down haphazardly, tell her to fuck off, and shakily sit down onto the mold encrusted floors. The earth is quiet now except for the buzzing of the cheap fluorescent lights, and you begin to tremble tremendously when you remember what finished you off. It pounds at you like the beat of Russel’s large fist, the fear on 2D’s mouse-shaped face, and the rage fogged in Noodle’s eyes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Daddy</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You are </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucked</span>
  </em>
  <span>, far beyond salvation. You knew you were the first night you sliced the skin of your arm open to honor your new father, equally as shitty, but more promising. You knew it when you saw a young, blue-haired boy with blood leaking from an eye socket because of your dastardly decision, and felt nothing but glee dance in your stomach. You knew it when you saw Noodle panicking and screaming like a wounded animal on the floating island, and your only thought was how </span>
  <em>
    <span>smashing</span>
  </em>
  <span> the music video would be. You knew it when you took the last remaining fragments and memories of your daughter and put her into a hollow, metal shell. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You’re struggling with losing your daughter all fucking over again, she comes and goes in your days like bullet speed trains, and you have the </span>
  <em>
    <span>audacity</span>
  </em>
  <span> to finish yourself off with that word. That’s one thing that will always stick to you like gum in your hair; the audacity. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Bile awakens in your throat, whipping its way up in your body like a 1000 mile per hour wind, and before you know it, you’re vomiting what’s left of your humanity into the dark ring of scum in this foreign, shit-stained toilet. Your hands clasp anything you can reach; grime seeping into your pores and germs crawling around you like roaches is not unfamiliar, but the disease you have will always wickedly surprise you. When you finally toss your head back in exhaustion, the stench of vodka, self-loathing, and the smell of your father’s favorite pub strangles you, and you do it all again. All you can think about is the past. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You think about the laughing fits you’d have with 2-D over the swan shaped scone shop you’d plan to open with; he was always your best business partner. You’d think of Russel and his playful witty comebacks, each with the crack of a whip that you enjoyed against your skin. You’d think of Noodle excitedly knocking on the door of your winnebago, bragging about the new Pokemon she caught, her smile wider than the Pacific. The crowds of screaming masses always cheered you up, but you’d dump all the fame you’ve ever had into the ocean to feel her arms wrapped around your torso. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You don’t know why you had decided to shag a stranger tonight; all it did was make your blister grow, fester, and rot quicker than its average decay. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>-----</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Stuart Pot towers over you like a long, dooming Tetris piece. You never liked how he always had a trump card over you, and his height was just a </span>
  <em>
    <span>physical</span>
  </em>
  <span> reminder that no matter how hard you try, he will </span>
  <em>
    <span>always</span>
  </em>
  <span> be bigger than you. Perhaps that was the reason why on your worst days, his mere existence would trigger you to beat his hollow coal eyes until the pink around them turned to royal purple. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You hated how as soon as fame trailed behind his back like a swarm of little ducklings, he started to develop a brain 24 years too late. His lip would quirk up into a sly smirk every time a groupie you fancied favored his company instead. He began to openly flaunt his beauty like a sodding disney princess, parading around on stage like a proper nonce, making flirtatious eyes at any girl he saw, and would later use his new found rock star charisma to convince them to oblige to his needs without a condom. Every so often, a young blue haired, cherub cheeked child would show up on Kong’s door steps with a mother desperate for any cash she could rummage around for. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Slags</span>
  </em>
  <span> was the only word you can think of when you saw their plump lips swell from their crying, and a bitter taste would boil in your mouth when you recalled how they flocked to Stuart </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking</span>
  </em>
  <span> Pot instead of you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Another woman in her early 30s shows up on 212 Wobble Street’s doorstep with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>perfect</span>
  </em>
  <span> little tyke, with his </span>
  <em>
    <span>perfect</span>
  </em>
  <span> button nose, his </span>
  <em>
    <span>perfect</span>
  </em>
  <span> aqua hair, and his </span>
  <em>
    <span>perfect</span>
  </em>
  <span>, long lost big brown eyes you’d destroyed 15 years ago, gleaming with curiosity and confusion. The little lad could be a part of fucking Hitler youth; you knew he’d grow into his looks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>exactly</span>
  </em>
  <span> like the father who didn’t even consider him an after thought. He’s everything 2-D used to be. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Before you drove your barely salvageable vehicle into his eye. Before the damage doubled in the bloody battle field of Tesco’s parking lot. Before you stuck your cock where it didn’t belong. Before you kidnapped him and drugged him and before the only thing his face knew for weeks was your fist. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Before you came into his life. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You grind your teeth into sandpaper as you watch the child smile politely at you, gaps in his teeth while his mother rambles on about something no one on Earth gives a flying fuck about. He’s a spitting image of Stuart Pot, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>only</span>
  </em>
  <span> Stuart Pot could craft such a </span>
  <em>
    <span>perfect</span>
  </em>
  <span> child without even putting any time or effort into the sex, where you just </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> he finished prematurely and left this now remorseful groupie high and dry. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> “He’s not home.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Anxiety consumes her eyes and eats away at her hope like maggots. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> “But-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“ARE YOU FUCKING </span>
  <em>
    <span>DEAF</span>
  </em>
  <span>, WOMAN? HE’S. NOT. </span>
  <em>
    <span>FUCKING</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
  <b>
    <em>HOME</em>
  </b>
  <span>.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve made a child cry. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You slam the door with the force of the Devil inside you, and wipe the remaining poison spit dripping from your mouth to your chin, a devilish smirk on your face; you know some landed on the woman’s forehead, and you pray to the universe that it felt like acid on her skin. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You hear that petulant child wailing outside with the same pitch and intensity of a police siren, and a cocktail of pride and shame stirs in your veins.  You’ve ruined another one of Stuart’s accomplishments, this time traumatizing his offspring. On one hand, fuck Stuart, it’s satisfying to know your power, it’s like hearing the cheerful noises slot machines make when you get a triple cherry. On the other hand, you just gave an innocent child, unaware of the history of lead singer 2-D and slimy bass player, Murdoc, nightmares for weeks, months, maybe (if you’re lucky) years. You’d creep into his psyche late at night and taunt him, the big, frightening green monster, with fangs as sharp as needles, and known by his enemies as </span>
  <em>
    <span>Niccals</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The beastly monster (you) would take delight in digging into his deepest insecurities. You can only dream that’s what will happen; add that to your list of influence on people, good or bad. You always leave a lasting impression. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You are </span>
  <em>
    <span>bad</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Murdoc-San,” 10 year old Noodle croaks like a frog through broken, childhood ruined tears when she catches you slapping 21 year old 2-D to the ground like he is the weight of a paperclip. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You are bad. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>-----</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Russel Hobbs sits. And he sleeps. And he waits. That is all your drummer has been capable of lately. And it is </span>
  <em>
    <span>infuriating</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The man has done nothing but hibernate and consume food like how a landfill consumes garbage for several years now. So </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span> is what the once highly esteemed, hip hop enthusiast, ghost inhabited, musical genius has become; a lazy.  Fat. Bum. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was always fat, but now, he has transformed into something almost inhuman. He is the giant Jack and the beanstalk warned you about in childhood; you had climbed up the clouds in search of riches, and not only were you granted with success, but the giant became your companion. You’re not even sure if you can even call Russel that anymore; he always disliked you, a hidden frown on his lips every time he encountered you. He doesn’t try to hide his disdain for you anymore. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So you become Jack, glaring defiantly at the giant slumbering in his prestige cloud castle, desiring nothing more than to outsmart him, just once. Your once bulletproof pride could not handle another blow, and Russel always knows how to throw the punches at you, literally and non literally. You’d always paraded around your signature wonky nose, and Russel helped to craft it perfectly all those years ago in the Kong studio toilets, 2d’s fallen from grace girlfriend screaming as you hit the floor like a ton of bricks. You almost giggle thinking about how your cock was still on display. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Years ago, back in that grimy hotel room that reeked of the pits of humanity, he had slammed you to the ground after you wrapped your nicotine stained palms around Stuart’s poor, lanky neck. It had stung like a wasp to your face, your bones, and your pride that swelled with bloodlust. The wasp sting burnt you when your band mates looked at you like elephant shit while you laid on the ground, it burnt a week later in that soulless Mexican brothel, it burnt and sizzled when you saw Russel’s large face again for the first time in 3 years on the doorstep of Kong. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Your pride is tired of stinging, and sizzling, and being burnt. Your own wasps inside of you call for something worse: a swarm of vicious attacks in the only weapon you have left; words. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Russel does not stir despite your vicious glare seeping into his skin; he’s now awake, his glossy white eyes stare back at you with disgust, glossing over your puny form. Like you’re a fucking pest, a roach, something you can squash, but you’ll keep on coming back for more. He sighs and the wind in the air sweeps with exhale, the trees shaking to it in fear. His mouth opens and buffers like an old computer, thinking of what he wants to do, but closes seconds later. He decides you aren’t worth his spectacular speech; you’re just a mere roach, after all. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The wasps buzz and swarm and itch to escape your throat, to finally get its righteous justice for the past 10 years of having your pride stung. Russel yawns a big, loud, looming yawn that declares that you are a bore, something you have </span>
  <em>
    <span>never</span>
  </em>
  <span> been, and the wasps fly like rockets from every hole on your face. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>lazy</span>
  </em>
  <span>, in</span>
  <em>
    <span>comp</span>
  </em>
  <span>etent, FAT </span>
  <em>
    <span>FUCK</span>
  </em>
  <span>!!!”</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>If Russel had pupils, they would most certainly be rolling like bowling balls back into his skull. His face sneers what his thick Brooklyn accent won’t; </span>
  <em>
    <span>that’s all </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>you’ve got, little man? </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> No. You and your army of wasps are </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> getting started. </span>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Really, I should have just hired you to guard 2D’s little dungeon on Plastic beach. You’re not scary, but you’re equally as fat. Fucking land whale, you are.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He ignores you. The buzzing rises like lava.  </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span> “I didn’t even need you for my third album! You’re as replaceable as any other fat tit pop star in the industry, so much so I got a sodding drum kit to do the trick just as well! Even </span>
  <em>
    <span>better</span>
  </em>
  <span>! I quite like that drum kit better than you, at least he doesn’t mope about all day, crying about how his Xanax prescription wasn’t filled on time.”  </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Now</span>
  </em>
  <span> you’ve caught the oaf’s attention. Predictable, like the time trains come and go. Russel’s black bushy eyebrows meet each other slanted on his big, round face. One side of his mouth is asymmetrically turnt down to form a wrinkly half frown. The buzzing tune of the wasps gets louder, bouncing around your ears.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know, I don’t know why I even bothered kidnapping you all those years ago. Your beats and insights are as cliche as a Disney film. Your only redeeming quality was that ghost, can’t remember her bloody name, and she’s been gone for years! Or he, can’t be bothered, I never cared anyways, much like the rest of us.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Bingo</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Russel jolts to life like Frankenstein, sparks of electricity bouncing off of his body like children in a bouncy castle. Electricity, no matter what kind, excites you like getting your first bass all over again. You recognize that your obedient wasps have finally implanted their needle-like thorns into him, and you pray like a nun that he feels that same sting you’ve felt for almost a lifetime. For the first time in years, you truly feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive</span>
  </em>
  <span>. This is how God must have felt seeing his most horrid and beautiful creation, Adam, spring to life, this is how Eve must have felt when she first tasted the rich sin of the apple, and this is how Lucifer must have felt falling down at lightning speed to the green of Earth. 212 Wobble Street begs for mercy underneath his giant form like the masses of helpless souls in Pompeii. Unlike the ground below you, you embrace the chaos. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Squash me, pummel me, do </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>anything </em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span>so I can feel again,</span>
  </em>
  <span> is all you can think when his face dominates the former bright blue sky above you. Clouds swell in the air, fertile with this new found rain and electricity. Nature knows something </span>
  <em>
    <span>violent</span>
  </em>
  <span> is about to occur on 212 Wobble Street, and like you, it has no clue what will truly happen. Anticipation is better than any orgasm you’ve ever obtained. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s silence in the air that hangs like a corpse from a noose. You’ve tasted that silence before, more than alcohol, to the point where it no longer scorches your tongue, throat, and belly. It’s been so long since you’ve swallowed this silence. Now, you’re bathing in it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know, man? I have </span>
  <em>
    <span>tried</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I have tried to at least tolerate your shitty behavior, but you need a wake up call, Muds. And I usually don’t do this type of shit, but at this point, you’ve left me no choice.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>  “You are </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> like your father, Murdoc.” </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span> It sounds, tastes, and feels like a death sentence from God himself. This is more brutal, cruel, </span>
  <em>
    <span>savage</span>
  </em>
  <span> than any physical wound. Out of all that blood pumping adrenaline, you remember what truly happens after it dies down; God realizes he’s created a weapon capable of utter destruction. Eve is sentenced to an eternity in a desert, forever imprinted as the cause of humanity's descent into evil. Lucifer slams into the Earth’s damned ground and becomes the beast, horns and hooves crowning him as Satan. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You are Adam. You are Eve. You are Evil incarnate. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You are Prometheus, lying miserable on a mountain with winds that freeze and bite your soul. An eagle with the wingspan of a plane devours your liver in a brutal feast. Every day, the cycle repeats. And repeats. And repeats. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Touché, Russel. Tou-</span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking</span>
  </em>
  <span>-ché. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>-----</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> It was years ago, decades ago, and it felt like centuries since. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sebastian has bloodied your eye in a carnage of fury. He had hurled your small spine onto a wall. You had heard a deafening crack, something that sounded like bone, when your small form clashed into the cheap purple wallpaper; you were relieved to find out it was the wall breaking under his pressure, rather than you. Anguish. It’s something you had grown accustomed to, how your body becomes used to waking up and going to sleep at a certain hour. Anguish was a part of routine since birth. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You had done nothing to awaken Sebastian’s hibernating rage other than consume the same air as he did. How </span>
  <em>
    <span>dare</span>
  </em>
  <span> you; it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span> nicotine polluted oxygen. Normally, as long as you stayed out of his way, Sebastian would pretend you were nothing more than a houseplant. An object he has to check up on at least one a day. But winter had descended upon Stone on Trent like the seven plagues of Egypt. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Snow licked at the muddy, unkempt streets of the city, and black ice became the most revered beast for all of its citizens. Your coat was far too thin to provide any warmth your little body desperately craved like a drug. You recall the wind snapping at you like rabid dogs; they had broken barks that sounded like a whistle. There was abusive rain and slush that seeped through your small brown boots and into your bloodstream. Grey was the only color the sky ever gave you, and thus, the little Murdoc’s world became grey. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Outside was supposed to be freedom. Outside, you were supposed to play, run around like a wild cat, climb trees and smoke cheap cigarettes with your two equally as shitty mates. Outside, you could forget about your brother’s snivellus sneer that sprouted cold bumps of fear along with little limbs. Outside, there was no threat of a fight that you didn’t ask for; you cherished the pleasure of your face being beaten till it was indigo by the notorious girls on your playground. Outside, the skyscraper figure of your father with splintery claws could not hunt and tear you apart. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Stoke’s selfish winter did not care that outside granted you the freedom you could only merely grasp. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You had been forced to see Sebastian daily now, a sentence worse than hanging from the gallows. Sebastian had places to go, slags to shag, and deals to make. It was comforting to know that this foul frost did also not care about Sebastian Niccals’ wants, which were just the same as needs. But because of this, Sebastian was left with a shit load of bitterness and rage that he wore on his mold encrusted sleeve. He walked through the puny flat with his venom plopping down to wooden floors, his boots splashing maniacally in it. You couldn’t avoid the lion in his own den. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> There was banging and screams that cluttered the home like litter. Bottles shattered and tore across the walls and into your arms. You searched for refuge in Hannibal’s bedroom, but he was always either wanking off to spunk stained pictures of Debby Harry or playing a Black Sabbath record he forbade you from seeing, one you could only hear through the paper thin walls while you cried yourself to sleep. You know Hannibal could hear your little wails that pleaded for protection, no matter how loud he turned the volume of his record player to tune the broken little boy out.  Hot tears felt like boiling water against your face, except for when his calloused hands wiped them for you; they became less scorching from his touch. There were times when your brother was kind to you, but it was like finding buried treasure. After a particularly scathing beating, with the taste of gunpowder on the tip of your tongue, Hannibal would let you climb into his bed that was barely big enough to hold both you and him. You’d coil around him like a snake on his lap, rocking back and forth to shakily find your grip on this world, and he would allow it when his empathy randomly struck him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>These occasions truly were the shooting stars of your purgatory-like childhood. Hannibal would act like the big brother you’ve seen in slice of life TV shows- in some fucked up version of it, at least. He would give you advice on women, what they like in men. He had told you new age women in the media pretend they want freedom, pretend to be ambitious and smart and good for something that isn’t a shag, but they always prefer a man who is </span>
  <em>
    <span>mean</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Vulgar. Controlling. Ones that have never known what it means to be sober. Ones that insult and degrade and dehumanize. Ones whose favorite hobby is using breasts as their own personal surface to snort fairy dust. Treat women like toys; use them for a couple of days, break them until they’re nothing but scraps of the doll they used to be, and then toss them out on the street for the mice to feed on. You listened to your brother’s advice like how a church goer listens to a sermon. You simply had no other priest to guide you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You did not have your bass guitar with tar thick, infectious melodies. You did not have the Devil and his promises of fame, fame greater than John Lennon’s. You had your brother; that was all, and that was enough. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Hannibal would tell you about his tattoos, how they’re a symbol of pride, how they make him stronger than their father’s wrath and the heat of the sun. Your little fingers would trace the pattern of the Iron cross on your older brother’s bicep. It was big, it was solid, and it was unbreakable. Objects in this flat were far too breakable; the bottles, the picture frames, and you - so you continued to ghost your fingers across that bicep, yearning to be iron too. Like the metallic smell when you’d walk past Sebastian’s bedroom. Like the prostitutes in Stoke with bruises that made them look like they had purple chickenpox. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Like your brother. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whenever you had the feeling of Family living on your fingertips, it was quickly bloodied to death. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Hannibal was not that slice of life brother you dreamed of. Often, he would leave you with fear that would consume you like how black consumes summer heat. You trembled like an animal anticipating the final blow. He was taller, smarter, bigger in every way imaginable. He did not have to tell you this; it was an unspoken, mutual understanding. Words would do no justice here. It was David and Goliath, but you had no trusty slingshot to rely on. He would tower over you with a villainous snear, and your fragile hands would strangle the carpet below you. You hated the way you would sniffle pathetically so much. It </span>
  <em>
    <span>always</span>
  </em>
  <span> got to the point where snot clogged your nostrils and replaced breathing with clumpy gasps. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You did not scream; you had been conditioned into not screaming in Pavlov’s more wicked lab. The only way you could express Anguish was through heavy breaths. Sometimes sobs, when no one clobbered you with their fist over the noise of a child’s crying. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hannibal was in his room this blistering winter, but his drug infested routine did not bend to mother nature’s course. His door was left cracked open slightly, glimpses of his life cascading through it when you peaked to see a needle as long as a ruler in the vein of his arms, and a blissful happiness only heroin could grant spread out on his face. You knew better to piss off your brother in the middle of him splashing in the waters of Heaven. After all, his face looked like Sebastian’s when lit up by animalistic fury, and if that expression had a name, it would be Sebastian Niccals. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> So, you try your best to pretend you do not exist. You try to become nothing in the landscape of Sebastian’s now small world, the tiger confined in his cage. The tacky parlor seems like a battlefield, those fields in England’s otherwise peaceful countryside that conceal minefields hidden below its crust. One wrong step, say farewell to a fully formed body and hello to blasted limbs that reek of a sea of blood. You pick up on the scent of that </span>
  <em>
    <span>damned</span>
  </em>
  <span> lavender perfume Sebastian’s favorite slags like to wear on his coat as you creep through, like a soldier in the trenches. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You stare at the same watercolor painting of Sebastian on the walls, the only one he could ever afford, and the one he could use to satisfy his needy ego, instead of buying you meals for a week (you loathed relying on school meals, because it meant you </span>
  <em>
    <span>actually</span>
  </em>
  <span> had to go). The man in the frame is a man you don’t fucking recognize. His eyes are silent, with no spark of resentment in them. His hands are neatly manicured, clean, and rest on the top of his dark, scarlet wood cane. His top hat is charmingly titled to the side like he’s in some idiotic Mickey Mouse cartoon. There is no chilling sneer that makes you feel like your head is in the slot of a guillotine, while he, the executioner,chastises your last words. He is calm, something you hadn’t even seen when he lay on the floor poisoned with alcohol. There is always a flame of outrage being kindled in his belly, even past the realm of consciousness. He is poised. Shoulders strong and straight. He has class. It is a lie. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Liar. Nonce. Twat. Scum. Those words float through your head like a prayer. You’re in a swimming pool where the chlorine is replaced with hatred for the man who gave you life. It feels good to feel the hot-as-hell water lick at your heels and clothe your face. There is nothing else to do in winter, locked in a scummy flat that forbids a summer sky, besides to think and to hate. You are tired and bored of thinking. You now hate. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Lying scum</span>
  </em>
  <span>”, you curse under your breath without thinking, as hatred controls your tongue like a puppet. Hatred does not think, it consumes and it acts, like fire devouring wood. It would be the first time you pay for your reckless loathing. It would not be the last. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What was that, you little twat?”, seethes Sebastain behind you, sleepily, but the words do not lack a drop of poison. You feel cold drench every nerve and atom of your body like you’ve been splashed awake with icy river water. The cold soaks through your skin and into your heart, who begins to thump like the walls of this flat when Sebastian throws another one of his infamous parties. You’ve learned that frostbite is synonymous with fear as the black hairs on your body begin to rise like the sun, slowly. You hunger for safety and forgiveness, but you cannot reach it. An eight year old boy’s arms are too stubby, his muscles undeveloped, and his excuses are not unbreakable like diamond yet. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You needed to scream, but the hypothermic water drowned your lungs and throat with anguish, until all that was left was that anguish on your sobbing taste buds. You taste fire and you taste ice. It burns your tongue.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Nothing to say? Figured as much, you pansy little faggot.” His much bigger green hand squeezes your shoulder like you’re a tiny stress ball, with the intention to destroy. You can feel the familiar strike of his leather belt pummel into your back </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> from the impalement of his nails into your skin. The way it damaged your skin until  light green transformed cherry red scars radiated the color red, and the color whispered Anguish. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He turns you around and slams you into the wall faster than a lightning strike from Zeus.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> When you plummeted to the ground with nothing but anguish in your soul, and with blood the flavor of iron killing itself in your mouth, your coherent thoughts ceased to exist. All that surrounded you was red. Your blood, red. Sebastian’s favorite parlor chair, red. His cane handle, red.The carpet, stained with red, flowing out of the orifice of your nose like water from a hose. Your nerves, blood vessels, neurons, red. You, red. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You no longer lived your life in shades of brown, muted greens, and grey. You had risen from the dirt you were buried under. Something primal had consumed those colors, and all you were left with was red. You tasted red, you inhaled red, bathed and drank the color red. Your skin burned with the color red; it had infected you entirely with its plague.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You no longer hunger for security, safety, protection. You no longer hunger for bigger arms shielding you from the evil lurking in this world. You no longer hunger for sunny skies and summery smiles from the pretty boys at the carnival. You no longer hunger for love from the man who is nothing but a parasite in your life. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Instead, you starve for revenge, served warm, hot, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Red</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Sebastian ildily sighs and tosses his cane to the ground like he’s bored. On any other regular day, this would have amused him. Like how babies get excited when playing Peek a Boo. A giddy smile and eyes sparkling with wonderment, wondering what will happen next. But slamming you, and dragging you, and using you for entertainment is just expected when Winter holds the Niccals’ family in its calloused hands. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Now go fuck off and get me a beer outta the fridge. It’s the least you could do after soiling my nap and my mood, face-ache.Christ almighty, what kind of past life did I have to get cursed with </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Murdoc?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The color red defeats the ice that dwells inside you, and conjures a scream at the pits of your throat. Like a bulimic, you purge it out. This loathing has pressed you under its thumb, pinned you there for ages, and this Red seeks to wreak havoc with revenge.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>          “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>…. </span>
  <b>
    <em>YOU</em>
  </b>
  <span>!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Although red masquerades your father’s ugly features, it is the first time you have ever seen him look at you with something that isn’t disgust or hatred. A raised eyebrow and a small smile flickers like a lighter being snapped. Curiosity.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“One day… when I am bigger, and stronger, and more of a man than you </span>
  <em>
    <span>EVER</span>
  </em>
  <span> will be, I’ll kill you. You’ll be in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank, and I will </span>
  <em>
    <span>FUCKING</span>
  </em>
  <span> kill you. I’ll beat you till you look like a raisin, until all your remaining teeth are knocked out, and I-I’ll put them in a little collection in my room. And I’ll make sure your eyes are barely lodged into your head- they’ll be hanging out by a stem, and blood will soak your old man clothes. It will happen when you least expect it, and it will be </span>
  <em>
    <span>BRUTAL</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I’m going to kill you, you old fucking bastard. And your screams will be like fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>MUSIC</span>
  </em>
  <span> to my ears. That isn’t a threat, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>pathetic</span>
  </em>
  <span> maggot. That is a promise.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It still remains one of the most satisfying moments in your life, that day when you were finally one step ahead of your dad. Red begins to dimen in the air like nuclear fallout, heavy with nothing but the intent to destroy. A laugh chimes in your ears, but it’s not one you’re used to hearing. Laughter in this flat is reserved after insults crueler than Hitler strike the air. Laughter is after a beating, or when a prostitute agrees to let your father face fuck her, or the high on heroin giggles sounding from your brother’s bedroom. This laughter seems pure, if not given the circumstances. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You have never heard laughter from your father that sounded proud. Not until today, when you finally stood your ground to your abuser. You had bread crumbs of satisfaction, and before you could gather more in your measly palms, it was snatched away from you. Proud laughter. You could never truly have the high ground. Not here. Not with him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know, Murdoc…. I’m starting to see a little potential in you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s the first time you’ve ever heard your name muttered on his lips. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You usually lay down like a slag in the bedroom when taking a beating, but you’ve really outdone yourself this time, little lad. Why, if my chums were here, we’d all be clapping for you right now! Good for you, </span>
  <em>
    <span>son</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He walks over to you with a smile that seems to have both genuine and mock endearment plastered on it. His big brown boots click with purpose, and you feel that drop in your stomach again, the one you get before you fall on a rollercoaster. You flinch out of habit like Pavlov’s dogs when he reaches his index finger to prop up your chin. His mud brown eyes gleam with mischief and hope when you look at him. You didn’t dare question how pathetic you must have looked in that moment, still struggling to get up like a cripple, while your father patiently waits. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I see something </span>
  <em>
    <span>great</span>
  </em>
  <span> in you, Murdoc. All that anger! It’s fucking incredible! How come you never snapped at me before, eh? Guess I was doing my parenting so damn well that you couldn’t, I suppose. No sniffles, no cries. You’re becoming a </span>
  <em>
    <span>man</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Manhood was hedonistic pleasure, misogyny, and possessing a temper that would even frighten the Devil himself. Another hollow lesson you’d carry with you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Your hands tense and tighten until you’re positive your knuckles became whiter than snow. You’re not sure you want to be a Man. You don’t have a say in the matter anyways. The judge had spoken his verdict. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Not even Hannibal stood up to me the way you just did, and you know that queer’s got some ferocity to him. Won’t stand up to me, he prefers to pick on someone that isn’t his own size. What a weasley little coward. But you- you’ve got it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s that chuckle that sounds like it belongs to the king of rats. Your fists throb like an organ from being squeezed. They are numb. Your mouth is numb from cursing. You are numb. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m proud of you, really am. It’s about time one of my offspring grew some balls.I have been </span>
  <em>
    <span>enlightened.</span>
  </em>
  <span> You know what I see now? I see </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You are </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> like me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That was the fate you had been sentenced to. Long before you had made comparisons of your features to your father’s in the mirror. Long before you ruined the life of three young talented musicians. Long before one of them, the new jury, repeated the verdict to your face, just to rub salt in the wound. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You are everything you've hated.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You are a Niccals.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You are just like him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Eleventh Commandment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Murdoc reflects back to a simpler time. But it's still a time he wishes he could forget.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>sorry this chapter isn't as long, but after typing it all out, i figured this segment deserved its own chapter. i've been having a difficult time writing due to lots of stress and depression. kudos or any type of feedback is loved and cherished. love u all, thank you for continuing to read this story.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It was in Kong Studios, mid November, 2004. The days had started to become shorter, like how old people shrink when they’re closer to being dragged to Hell. The leaves turned crimson red and brown; they didn’t fall like old people though. They fell slowly, gracefully, patiently, and danced on the ground to the rhythm of the wind. You liked autumn and preferred cool weather. You didn’t like it sweltering hot; although the summer’s heat of Essex does not hold a candle to the fires of Hell that scar and slice like razors, you only liked to sweat on your terms. Like the blood pumping with the speed of a cheetah before and after an excellent shag. You did not like to sweat because of the weather. Fuck that, and fuck you, pollution companies that light the atmosphere on fire. They birthed it from their sickly match. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Your new album was nearly ready for release; a few more notes, tunes, and recording sessions would be finished soon enough. You called it yours, like you conceived its genius in the birth canal of creativity in your mind, but it wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>truly</span>
  </em>
  <span> yours. Kind of like the insecurity adoptive parents feel sometimes when they see the kid they raised develop no facial features of theirs. This new album - Demon Days- was yours, but it wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> yours. You did not develop it in your mind the way you did with the first Gorillaz album, didn’t watch it grow from the size of a raisin in your brain to a fully developed baby album. You wanted to call it yours, be proud of this baby the way entitled mothers do after they snatch the baby out of the surrogate’s arms, but the surrogate always ends up snatching it back anyways once they see their final product. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Noodle was that surrogate. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>She was different then as she is different now on 212 Wobble Street. She grew long, thick black bangs to the point where they masqueraded her eyes; that should have been the first sign that something was going down to shit. If eyes are the windows to the soul, she made herself appear soulless. She was beginning to flush herself down the toilet of adolescence. Within two years of your absence, she had begun to sprout like spring flowers, intellectually and physically. She was smarter, had more wisdom than you ever possessed at her age. She was mainly quiet now compared to the ball of sunlight she had been in prior to her preteen years. You spent your free time at age 14 smoking fags and making a white christmas of your bedsheets in your sleep; she hunted zombies for sport and wrote songs so powerful that even Shakespeare would be intimidated . She used to go on and on about video games like how petty thiefs go on and on about the items they stole, practically bragging about it. Now, she kept it to herself, thumbing away furiously at her new gadget - a Gameboy is what she called it -  with a deeply concentrated vision on her face, like fucking Issac Newton figuring out equations for gravity. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Noodle talked about Demon Days a </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Sure, she talked about Gorillaz too when it was first released, but Demon Days was </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span> baby. It had spent 9 crucial months in the womb of her brain, developing, growing, forming new and exciting features everyday. You had begun to tune her speeches on saving the people from fauxy corporate influence like she was some radical, annoying as all fuck preacher on the street corners. It’s not that you didn’t agree with her; the world, back then more than ever, was lacking in anything authentic. Everything was a copy of an original art piece being sold to you by scammers, with their welcoming, cheerful smiles that would turn to greedy smirks as soon as you bought the product. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>But she was </span>
  <em>
    <span>truly</span>
  </em>
  <span> obsessed with it. Most teenage girls obsess over blond hair boy bands bred in a science corporate lab. Not her. She was obsessed with completely genociding the modern landscape of entertainment of those boy band clones. It was deeply personal to her, far too personal for you, and you did not push at this purple bruise of hers because you mutually understood that only the person who </span>
  <em>
    <span>has</span>
  </em>
  <span> the bruise can poke at it. Unless you’re invited to poke it, do </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>fucking poke it. Simple concept to grasp. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>But of </span>
  <em>
    <span>course</span>
  </em>
  <span> the blue beanpole bandmate of yours did not have his handle on this concept, and he poked, and pushed, and prodded, and dug his finger into it the indigo-beige bruise until Noodle smacked his hand away with the fury of a tiger. And then, no one asked about what happened to Noodle in Japan, and why she could speak English, and why she was so hyper fixated on this pipedream idea of her little baby being the beacon of hope to this scary new world. This new world of the 2000s, damped in illegitimate performances and uncertainty. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You had told her if one thing is for certain in this damned world, it is uncertainty. Though her eyes were shielded from yours, you knew something resembling grief danced in them. She had no witty retort to that. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You didn’t want to give Demon Days, or the world, or her, any more brain power sucked dry from your remaining sober brain cells. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>The hangover was already kicking in. It’s only three in the morning. Far too early in the night for your liking when you take another swig of the bottle of some pompous hipster brand you picked up from a pub once. You  had bribed the bartender with some golden Gorillaz cash. It tasted spicy and minty; it reminded you a bit of Mexico’s array of pubs that lined up like brightly colored stores in New York City. You never really liked mint. Sure, you’d pop one in your mouth from time to time when you know your presence poisoned the air with booze like carbon dioxide. But it’s not like you would try to act like a good kid when adults would attempt to bribe you with a mint in an exchange for you to shut your sodding trap. That was an impossible task. That’d be like telling casino owners during the tourist season in Vegas to close and think of the gambling addictions they’re fueling. You are a casino owner, practically; you had a way of making others see the Murdoc Niccals way, as your cunt of a school teacher had told Cass Brown for Rise of the Ogre. He was right about that. Just like a casino owner, you refused to see the good it would do to simply stop while you’re ahead. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You refused to see the good what would come if you hadn’t strangled your frontman until he turned as blue as his hair, his neck soggy like a sock puppets’. Or when you stormed off like a locomotive train, its first destination: Mexico. Or when you made a deal with the ghastly gas masked demon that promised material riches in return for riches only children possess- innocent souls, yet to bruise like a freshly picked banana. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Demon Days was a phenomenal album. You almost felt bad for Noodle; all that success couldn’t be done without a Demon lurking behind the curtains. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Key word is almost. You really, </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> needed some cash. The fountain of money had stopped flowing from your first release. People had begun to treat you regularly again, and you </span>
  <em>
    <span>hated</span>
  </em>
  <span> that. You refused to believe you were just one of many pawns in Satan and God’s chess game. To be insignificant is worse than death. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You hear a botte strike the ground and clap the concrete of the car park like an atom bomb meeting a peaceful field. Your ears quirked and trembled in pain like a child at the sound; queasiness floated in your belly like leaves being blown by the wind on a cool day. There was something always far too familiar about that sound; familiar like how a baby knows the scent of its mother, how everyone knows the song meant to memorize the ABCs. This should not be familiar, natural, even </span>
  <em>
    <span>known</span>
  </em>
  <span>. That same child in you flinches at it; it feels like Sebastian’s cigarette butt being squashed into your forearm. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You despise feeling that small; it’s probably just some slimy little raccoon shifting around in your garbage can, like paleontologists searching for fossils in the sand. Still, you hated feeling that small. Despised feeling like that child on stage surrounded by the eyes of hungry, ravenous wolves. You hated feeling the nails of your father’s dig into yours years later when he’s buried six feet under the ground, unable to scar, hurt, drag you into his own misery. He’s dead. But never really gone. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>One thing that hasn’t died with age is hatred.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Another bottle drops to the ground, gravity flinging it at supersonic speeds. Your skin prickled with goosebumps that felt like thorns making roots in your muscle. Anger replaced fear as your mighty protector, boiling like water on a stove getting ready to pop onto the flesh of that damned, </span>
  <em>
    <span>idiotic</span>
  </em>
  <span> raccoon. The wicked knows no rest, after all, so of course this raccoon is sorting through your garbage. Does it know how many women would growl and fight over your discarded trash? It’d be like watching two lionesses bloodily battle it out at the water hole. What gives this </span>
  <em>
    <span>entitled</span>
  </em>
  <span> creature from Satan’s ball sack the right to steal that idea from you? Fucking. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Prick</span>
  </em>
  <span>. A frown settled on your lips like a heavy fog, unrelenting and ominous, before you had flung your royal purple bed sheets from your body and headed to the carpark like a widow seeking vengeance for her murdered husband. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Your head shouted from the pounding the alcohol had given you, like the devil was beating his wife in your skull. A hangover and anger is a molotov cocktail for disaster, one that even a succubus would shiver at. Any unlucky person who has seen the beast in the flesh has been scarred permanently. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You stomp, stomp, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>stomp </span>
  </em>
  <span>to your formerly prized Winnebago’s entrance like the big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, demanding answers and something to devour in your rage. Your fist acts as your puffs, your pathetic vehicle’s door being a house made of stray, before you see what’s caused your temper to flare like a scratched scab. Outside there is Noodle, your stay criminal raccoon. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You felt like you were looking upon a shot deer gasping out its final breaths in despair, eyes big and watery, body wounded and weak. Her chest breathes in and out like she just ran a five hundred kilometer charity event, but you know better; this sight is something you have glimpsed at through a mirror. She has screamed and cried with silence, like roses being baked alive in the summer heat. Ached like an upset stomach for something she could not have. Tasted the color of hopelessness at the back of her throat, and was forced to swallow it like cold medicine. She is wrath and lost innocence wrapped into the body of a young girl. Far too small of a vessel for such emotion. Rage and grief infests a child far quicker than it does to an adult. You know that. It is familiar, when it shouldn’t be. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>In her small hands lies dark, purple under toned hair, cut off in a tornado of angst only channeled through the realizations that come when growing up. It is snipped hazily and sloppily, different lengths of pin straight darkness drifting from her hands like snow from heavy clouds. Young boys never got an eye batted at them if they stripped their head of some hair; for a teenage girl to cut her hair, an important factor in societal womanhood, it is a finalized gesture of insanity to the rest of watching eyes. Yet, they lied there unaware of its societal rules, in a pungent carpark that reeked of your favorite fags and lost innocence. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Her hands shook and trembled like a man with parkinsons. Erratic movements from the hurt animal’s final moments. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Noodle is aware of what she has done. What has happened. You didn’t expect less from her; she has always been inquisitive. Even though she could not comprehend your wicked curses in English once, she watched, listened, and took notes in her brain to store later. She has always understood why. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span> Her nose, cheeks, and lips are puffy and red like an irritated mosquito bite. A tear drips from her face and plops to the ashy concrete like a bright morning grass oozing dew after a stormy night. If you snapped a photo, she’d have looked like a damaged 50s China Doll in the backroom of an antique store. Parts of her new uneven hair cut stick out from her head like the quills of a porcupine; sharp, jagged, and entirely unintentional. It reminded you of alternative girls with black stained lips in the 80s, taking on unconventional attractiveness as a weapon for rebellion. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You weren’t sure if this was rebellion or not; you read people like picture books, but she was like fucking hieroglyphics. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You can feel those hidden eyes bleeding into you like ink into paper. Although it is dark and dingy in this cave-esque car park, everything about her is glowing, naturally commanding attention without any effort. She is a broken light, flickering. She does have a soul after all. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why?” You voice without thinking, the word floating heavily in the air like fog. She’s silent and still. The first time you’ve seen her transform into a marble statue. It was a frightening feeling; the feeling you get when looking down from the balcony and ponder how easy it would be to fall. The pit that settles in your stomach like cement when you consider swallowing all the pills on your bedside table. You remain as still and unwavering with emotion as she does; when a child is used to pretending, it is all they know, and you realized you’ve both been actors your whole life. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You wanted to ask what happened in Japan. You didn’t. Coming to this realization, that you have more in common with this 14 year old girl than anyone else you’ve ever met, frightened you back into a hole of stoicism. You understood why she was quiet now; to show the wounded animal in you takes vulnerability, and vulnerability requires trust. Something you both severely lack to this day. It wasn’t anything personal back then; the message registered to you both through stares. Words were inefficient in this situation anyways. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But still, you wanted to know the basics. Asking why was out of curiosity, not out of concern. Although seeing Noodle, formerly the girl whose smile could have been on a box of cereal in this wounded animal state, tugged at your heart till it reverberated in your bones. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Her bottom lip quivers like erratic wave lengths for only a beat before it transforms back into a perfect horizontal line. Snot began to pore out of her nose like honey from a beehive before she suckled it back up there; the noise sounded painful, like she had just amputated a limb. You don’t like how eerie this feels. This discomfort, this failed camouflaged vulnerability, this wounded animal. This eeriness resides on your skin like sweat; this was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> sweating on your terms.You did not agree to this, and you certainly did not anticipate it.  At least with weather, it is predictable. This was like watching a plane crash into the Twin Towers all over again, but much, </span>
  <em>
    <span>much</span>
  </em>
  <span> worse, because you are standing in one of those towers with Death’s hand on your shoulder. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>The least you would have liked to know is just a simple explanation for why this particular plane crash had occurred. And why you’re standing in the belly of the flames. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>She considers this question after the humiliating amount of snot has been quelmed. She exhales like she’s been in the ocean holding her breath for a dangerous amount of time. There is another quirk of her lips until she sighs again. The sigh sounds like an admittance of defeat, her white flag. You can practically hear her firecracker voice; </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fine, you got me, </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>老人. </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span> Are you happy?</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“People - </span>
  <em>
    <span>Men</span>
  </em>
  <span> - look at me differently now. They stare. And they undress me with their eyes. It is violating. I am not scared of those men who are outright vile with their intentions; I fear the men who do it silently and crafted. Like rats. I don’t like it. I don't want </span>
  <em>
    <span>anyone</span>
  </em>
  <span> touching my hair - </span>
  <em>
    <span>no one</span>
  </em>
  <span> touching it. No one looking at it. No one! I don’t want my appearance to be controlled; it has just begun and I am sick of the corporate men telling me otherwise. When you aren’t there. When no one is there except us. I want to get rid of my hair. But I can’t do it. Not all the way. I don’t want people to truly see me. I don’t want anyone to treat me differently now that I’ve aged. I don’t want to be controlled; no one can control how I look. So I cut some of it off. Because I need to let everyone know that I am in control.” </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> am in control.” </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Who knew the words of a young teen girl could punch fill your stomach up with water and then repeatedly punch the soaked organs inside you. You wished your curiosity hadn’t taken the bait for the complete, utter disaster you just heard spill from her lips. The hangover screams in your skull till it floats down into your stomach. What the fuck are you supposed to say to that? You know what you </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel. </span>
  </em>
  <span> Anger lights a match in your veins at the vivid picture she brought to you. The bastards at corporate would pay blood for this; you’d personally pluck all of their toenails off one by one and have a slag infect them with AIDS. There is nothing more evil than taking advantage of a child. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p><em><span>Rule #5:</span></em> <em><span>Do not make sexual advances unless given the mating signal. </span></em></p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Rule #9: Do not harm young children. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The men and corporate know no rules of Satanism and the devout Earth; they only know depositing checks and the pound symbol bled into their eyes. You often wondered if the beast you worshipped was on their side; the beast, the ruler of man, whose number is known as 666.  Did they listen to the beast when he rose from the Earth, horns like a lamb, having the tongue of a dragon, a tongue that preached old religions and devout worship in oneself? Did they receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead? Did they forget that the devout hedonistic worship in oneself is only granted by the beast? Did the beast even care about these rules scribed in printed books? When did his commands become second place to man’s desires? </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>These men do not belong to God, created in his image. They don’t belong to the beast, Satan, almighty of Hell, ruler of man. They do not even belong to the Earth who nurtures them. They belong to something humanity created to control others, to decide who gets the say in all meaningful matters. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>No, the beast doesn’t care, unless these men go back on the deals they made with him. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You were never sure if you were any better of them, especially when you gaze upon a girl broken like glass, her shards digging into your body, where internal bleeding begins to flow like a river. She would not be glass shards if you hadn’t immediately looked at her like she was a future show pig; plump with promise for success. Crafted and bred for perfection; she must have been. No kid under the age of 10 could torture her guitar strings the way she did, a brutal pace and melody not only on the instrument, but something she carried in her spirit, her way of behaving, </span>
  <em>
    <span>living</span>
  </em>
  <span>. So, you had channeled that inhuman talent in her; cleaned her from the splinters in the fedex crate. Made sure Russel had cooked her nutritious meals. You would buy her new age grunge Japanese clothes, styles she had fawned over in magazines; innocence clouded her judgement. Despite her insightfulness, a child can never see red, dangerous lights flashing through rose colored glasses. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Washed, fed, brushed. A prized pig groomed. She would be sensational in the modern music landscape. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You had not taken into account that these corporate men were sexually interested in prized pigs. There’s always degenerate rats lurking underneath the floorboards, waiting to spread their disease and knaw on the hooves of these many prized pigs. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You would kill these rats if they dared to try. But, this was your own doing; you should have seen through your fame-obsessed haze that a girl isn’t a goddamn pig. She is a child. And that child’s name is Noodle. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You don’t want to see the similarities between these men and you, so, you cut the cord of the torturous thoughts in your brain. You don’t want to know you are like them. You had once asked Sebastian in your youth what your mother was like. He winced and shrugged, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Just like there’s always a bible in the nightstand of every hotel, you can always count on your brain to remind you of that. You’re a foolish cat getting brutally murdered by curiosity, or worse, introspection. You swallow the boulder that floats in your throat, feeling the solid rock scratch and claw its way into your digestive system. The boulder thumps to the pit of your stomach and makes you feel the weight of everything that has happened. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You can empathize with Noodle. 2-D’s sweet and caring, Russel is a good listener and </span>
  <em>
    <span>always</span>
  </em>
  <span> knows what to say in these complex situations. You never truly knew how to fix the problems of a wailing, sad human. Like a fucking rubix cube you couldn’t solve. But for</span>
  <em>
    <span> once</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you knew what this was like. For that specific realization to collapse on you like a piano falling from the roof  in Looney Toons. The realization that you are nothing more than a show puppet for the eager audience of adults surrounding you. The realization that your life in itself is a performance, an audience always watching from the shadows, long after the stage lights have been shut off. You remember how lonely it felt to shake and sing a show tune on stage, despite the sadistic crowd in front of you. You remember how lonely it felt every time a tomato collided with your body; like a fucking car had slammed into you. You remember how lonely it felt in the early hours of the morning, the rest of the world hibernating, when you realized that you were just a boy attached to strings, your life on surveillance. Back then, there were no internet forums to busily bust around your every move, like bees attending to their queen. You were only critiqued on stage and behind alleyways riddled with STDs, places where you couldn’t hear their words. Now, a lonely show puppet could see these ruthless critiques wherever they turned. Back then, you did not have a record label to surveillance every breath you took; a little show puppet like yourself could have some privacy and freedom from the audience. But she was thrust into the cruel hands of management and capitalism from the moment she uttered her first words to you - “Noodle.” That damned FedEx crate acted as the birth canal to her unfortunate fame; popped out, and the fate had been sealed in bulletproof ink. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>It really is </span>
  <em>
    <span>all your fault</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You have an eternity (literally) to ruminate on this ghastly mistake (crime) you created- but it seems a little counterproductive to do that. And to make it about you anyways, but you always have to relate it back to yourself. The world revolving around you was the only way to survive through the childhood you clawed your way out of; in adulthood, you cannot learn other ways to survive. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Noodle</span>
  </em>
  <span>…” is all you can weakly muster from your tongue, cracked syllables like damaged, now worthless goods. Your crippled soul reaches out to her slightly deformed one in the dark, waiting for her soul’s hand to grasp yours for anything that resembles safety, even if it is brief. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Your young guitarist moves to you like a ball and chain shackles her right foot, a defeated limp towards the only life boat left in this sinking ship; you. When her smaller arms wrap around you and cling for dear life on your skin, she finally breaks open, shatters like a dam in the midst of a hurricane. Tears impale your chest like you’re in the middle of a hail storm, brisk wind and fear falling onto your skin. Her muffled hiccups and wheezes are like claps of thunder that rumble against your chest. A harrowing wail rips itself from her throat into you, where it rumbles to your core, and shrivels up like a raisin in the sun. There’s an indescribable ache that tangles your lungs in a noose the longer she screams and howls, and you feel so fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>useless</span>
  </em>
  <span>, because you’re a starved anorexic when it comes to intimacy. You crave it, but you avoid it like the plague. You can’t avoid this. You can’t avoid </span>
  <em>
    <span>her. </span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>So, you try your best. You think of the times you screeched and sobbed like this until your throat felt raw, and you think of what Hannibal would do when he cared. Your hand finally moves to embrace the girl you’ve wounded; you wonder if she knew you were the one who created this hole in her, but it doesn’t seem like it, because </span>
  <em>
    <span>she</span>
  </em>
  <span> came </span>
  <em>
    <span>here</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and she </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows</span>
  </em>
  <span> that your insomnia never lets you sleep. </span>
  <em>
    <span>She</span>
  </em>
  <span> came to </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span>, for a reason you’ll never find the answer to. So, you push a step forward in trying your best, focusing back on what Hannibal would do. Your right hand draws a slow, steady, infinite circle on her twitching back. She grips tighter; you know it’s working. Deep wails of sorrow begin to slow into sloppy attempts at breathing. You realize your chest is fucking soaked now, like you’d been sprayed with a hose. You would have resented anyone else who dared to do this to you; you could never resent Noodle. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Her grip gets a little softer as her cries die down, her inhales and exhales deep compared to the stuttering shallow ones she took before. She’s still now. So quiet, so small. Like a little music box with a broken tune. Blood spurts out from your lip; you’d been gnawing into it since she clinged to you, an anxious habit you haven’t touched in years. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s get you in bed, little tyke.” You whisper, surprising yourself at the tenderness of your tone. Her eyelashes flutter like a butterfly against your chest and she nods, finally pulling away, finally giving you an opportunity to breathe. You pick her up in your arms before your brain really processes what else you just got yourself involved in. You could have just wished her a goodnight and let her limp into her bedroom. Instead, her legs are wrapped around you, and her breath spikes goosebumps on your neck. When you begin to walk through the long, haunted hallways of Kong, you both have a mutual understanding to stay silent after that much noise. You knew after you cried like that in the briefly forgiving arms of your brother, exhaustion sent you into a coma. If she’s not asleep yet, she will be soon. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>When you finally gently place her onto her cherry red bed, she seems at peace, lost in a dream. Your last parting gift to Noodle that night was a gentle kiss to her forehead. You returned back to your Winnebago and the hangover headache roared itself to life again. And you began to cry. Your weeping was soft and not harsh like hers. Your tears kissed your pillow and you tried to forget. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You fell asleep to the lullaby your broken nose whistles when it exhales. You didn’t really </span>
  <em>
    <span>rest</span>
  </em>
  <span>, though.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span> You dreamt of Noodle drowning behind transparent glass, bubbles gurgling her terrified screams. You couldn’t break the glass, it seemed to be made of iron and determined to murder her. You banged and pounded and there was nothing you could do but stare in horror when you saw life leave her eyes, her corpse floating to the bottom of the glass box ,like she was nothing more than a feather in the wind. You woke the next morning in a cold sweat, something that isn’t unusual for you. If you aren’t sleep deprived, night terrors frequent your mind like vultures around a dead animal. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>You weren’t used to having night terrors that involved Noodle. Especially ones where you watched her meet the end of her life. Far too early for a little one to die.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now, all of you can dream of is her terrified eyes and her hollow screams. You couldn’t see her eyes back then. You wished you could. Because now, you see them everyday, a slightly swollen bruise still healing on one of them. You were wrong all those years ago when you told your daughter that the one thing certain in this world is uncertainty. You know that Noodle will never </span>
  <em>
    <span>truly</span>
  </em>
  <span> forgive you for what happened on that cursed windmill island. Even if the wound you gave her </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>heal to the point where it’s no longer bloody and raw, the pink and white around it will always be there; it’s a scar, after all. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>That is the new unspoken rule between you and Noodle. Carved silently on a stone by God, the eleventh commandment. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And how long before you realized (did you realize?) shame was a blade</p><p>      you turned against yourself</p><p>      and once you knew it</p><p>                                 you could use it—</p><p>— Leila Chatti, from “Questions Directed Toward the Idea of Mary,” Deluge</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. blue and its many hues</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“So how is the sex, anyways?”, you ask in 10% curiosity, 90% tauntingly. It was always amusing to think 2-D had any skills related to pleasuring a woman; his talents lied on stage for the screaming masses, not in between his legs, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>certainly</span>
  </em>
  <span> not when a lady below him asked him to use his mouth for her pleasure. You weren’t even sure back then if 2-D knew what sex </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> - you suppose he had urges as all young men do, thought about breasts bouncing like a football in his face, thought about what’s soaked and hot and presented to him like a fucking birthday present, in between the thighs of a woman. Stuart was a boy; he didn’t know how to act when someone gripped him and cried for wanton relief. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Paula was well on her way to crossing the line between girlhood and womanhood. Girls could put up with that type of bumbling idiocy; they would coddle a boy inefficient in making her satisfied, like a mother and a child. Eventually, girls, like the children they are, would realize that they had been playing with the same toys their whole lives, only to be disappointed in the end. Winding up a Jack in the Box and watching him </span>
  <em>
    <span>pop! </span>
  </em>
  <span>Before their own melodies reached a climax. Of course, this realization does not occur overnight - it happens like a caterpillar in a cocoon. At the end, they unwrap their shell, primed and ready for a good shag - one where they’ll end on a high note, the Jack in the Box releasing after hers. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>By the time Paula had been introduced to you, she had begun to climb out of the cave of sexual ignorance, her wings uncurling in the sunlight. You knew something had bubbled up inside Paula when 2-D blindly introduced her to you; her eyes glinted in something primal, scanned you like you were a map. You were never one to not back down from this fight she had inadvertently created; you scanned her back, piecing her lust together like a puzzle. Lonely, </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely</span>
  </em>
  <span> unsatisfied, you examined. Her chest puffed and swelled up at attention, like a cat’s tail when frightened; it wasn’t intentional, just a reaction, an innate behavior she had tried to shun. Already, this young woman’s body screamed shameful secrets her red painted lips never could.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You found Paula to be a mediocre prize, in terms of the actual forbidden fucking you two shared. If you looked up the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>average</span>
  </em>
  <span> in the dictionary, a photo of Paula would be the first definition. Her cunt was like a lukewarm soup when you had penetrated her in the bowels of Kong. Like an incredibly disappointing plush toy you’d won at a claw machine, despite spending many hours and pounds trying to scoop her up. There were some redeeming qualities of her physical appearance; her lips were rose shaped and artificially colored to your liking; you would push back the petals to kiss and fill with your fertilizer. Her nose was too obtuse for your liking, wide like a rectangle. But her </span>
  <em>
    <span>eyes - </span>
  </em>
  <span> when she gave you a sultry look, those felt like wax from a candle plopping onto your flesh. Burning hot and fucking sexy. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But other than that; average. Boring. Overplayed like the same garbage Nsync pop tune on the radio. You could find many Paula’s out there; there was probably a school of fish for women like Paula, women as singular faceted as Paula. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, what was the motive to shag Paula? Well, there was one thing Paula had that not any other girl at the time posessed; she was societally and romantically connected to Stuart fucking Pot. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even though you would protest with the passion of a Civil Rights activist to interviewers (and the closest thing you had to family) that you weren’t truly an insecure little weed of a person, you had begun to come to terms with your reality when you could no longer run away from it. It was on an island with no more roads to sprint upon - Plastic Beach. You had met Reality, a cold and paralyzing stare from a humanoid octopus. He, She - </span>
  <em>
    <span>They</span>
  </em>
  <span>, would dig up a grave of your greatest regrets and truths you’ve buried underneath the dirt of your mind. You had sat in a gradually heating bathtub for almost twenty years; you had been boiled to permanent damage with your lies before you knew it. One third degree burn you had been forced to bandage was </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span> you hated the man locked in your glass prison below the sea. The hideous truth was more simple than you would have liked. You had always hated 2-D because he was the human embodiment of everything you could not have. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You clawed your way to success. Scratched and bitten and screeched until your throat turned raw for it. Endured being brutally fucked behind a dumpster from a man whose breath had the odor of rotten eggs, </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> to get one of your songs played on a local radio station and a happy meal for the night. All 2-D had to do was sing a simple C note, and success jumped into his arms like a bride to her groom on a wedding day. Sure, he’d lost his 20/20 vision for it, but they were still there in the bloody pits of his cranium. You had abandoned comfort, safety, and everything holy and good in this world for fame. He was like the fucking Dali Llama socially, and you were like Joseph Stalin. You grew up in the cesspool of humanity where everything was rotten to its core like an apple, embodying humanity’s sin. Stuart grew up in a diamond plastered palace compared to the crummy bedroom where you slept each night. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But you </span>
  <em>
    <span>hate</span>
  </em>
  <span> the word jealousy. You </span>
  <em>
    <span>hate</span>
  </em>
  <span> to describe yourself as </span>
  <em>
    <span>jealous</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You simply aren’t allowed to be jealous; it’s hideous and stupid and pointless. You aren’t like 2-D; you are a lot of ugly, fractured pieces of the worst of humanity, but you shun the idea of you participating in such a </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid</span>
  </em>
  <span> activity such as jealousy. Jealousy is stupid because it ultimately accomplishes nothing and it does no good for you, specifically - you couldn’t be bothered to give a fuck about how it impacted your bandmates. So, fuck that, you’re not jealous.There could be nothing stupid about your existence - you would try to murder the resentful thoughts with a chainsaw, bloody them up to pieces. But they were truly a parasite; they would rejuvenate despite the insidious precautions you had taken to erase them. Like a zombie, but you always poorly missed their brain with your pistol. You’ve tried shoving your way into being the star during interviews, and for the most part, it worked; bad actions always got more press than the benevolent efforts of 2-D. That would soothe the jealousy momentarily, ice on a wound. But you were never allowed to let the feeling of superiority ever truly resonate; all good things must end, all ice must melt. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You wished you were a goddamn freezer to keep it cool. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You’ve worn many disguises to masquerade how you’ve felt. You’ve looked in the mirror and always examined the options of what mask you’d put on today; the bright, flashing one, carnival esque and fucking obnoxious in every sense of the word, giddy, insane, performing. Another one was dark and foreboding; kind of like the scent of a thunderstorm that flutters through your nostrils in the breeze, while skies begin to dampen with blues and greys. When you wore that mask, they stayed quiet in fear of ripping it off. If they ever tore it off, there would be hell to pay, inevitably. Even touching it had its consequences. Your favorite mask was by far the one you’ve worn on rather rare occasions; commanding, but also subtly demanded attention and respect. A mask with a crown on it, made of fake diamonds and your blood. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Paula had a sweet pink color pounce on her cheeks like a tiger, the crown on top of your head expanded until it was towering over 2-D’s lengthy figure. You were king. You had the cards in your favor. You had power. You had something 2-D didn’t; that was a victory in itself. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You were never jealous, though. Never. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Seems you continue to wear your Pinocchio mask whose nose grows like a child during puberty. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, you did that thing that always drives sexually conflicted birds insane; even if the insanity was fleeting like a cool breeze on a sweltering day, it was just enough madness for you to lure them into your bed. It had worked on many of Paula’s predecessors; slags were predictable creatures, ones you studied in a bar instead of a typical science lab. Ultimately, they prided themselves on their pious devotion to the man they had assigned as </span>
  <em>
    <span>boyfriend</span>
  </em>
  <span>. That type of esteem didn’t last long; not when you’d pull out your most gifted temptor of all. They’d flock to you hesitantly at first. But they couldn’t resist their curiosity for long. When you are presented with the opportunity of something more fulfilling, something </span>
  <em>
    <span>better</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it’s just human nature to take a bite. Like Eve to the apple tree, and you, the serpent. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You released your tongue from your mouth and swiped it coyly across your lips. You didn’t break eye contact. She had to </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> it was for her - that flirty lick of your chapped lips, like she was a fucking five star meal at your favorite restaurant. It was practically as daring as picking her up and slamming her against the wall, grinding your crotch into hers while your hands roamed her body, as if she were a satin blanket. In the world of sexual tension, your gesture was just that. You understood each other. You hoped to draw her in like a moth to a flame, devour her whole, leave her to crisp ashes. But more importantly, you’d hope to do worse to her stupid, pathetic imbecile of her boyfriend worse. Make 2-d </span>
  <em>
    <span>completely</span>
  </em>
  <span> gone. Stuart Pot was already dead; 2-D had taken his place. So, the new goal became to dissolve his never ending optimism in a tub of acid. He didn’t falter when you had destroyed his eyesight and his chance of ever looking like a </span>
  <em>
    <span>human</span>
  </em>
  <span> again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He acted like you were a Messiah, you had risen from the dead on the third day and just decided to resurrect him too because you were just </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> kind. Some days, his endless praise and thankfulness would make you feel like the God you proclaimed you were. He should be thankful. You did, in some fucked up way, shake him from his never ending sleep back into the sunlight. You took away his life, and gave it back. Circular. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> On other days, it irritated you to no end. Like a scab, ripe for plucking and picking. You’d give into your anger and peel the shit stained crust back until blood surfaced and drowned your skin in it. You slapped him unexpectedly, letting the boy hit the cruel edge of a wall, and he bounced off the hard surface back to the equally solid ground. Like he was a ping pong ball, you the paddle. And it felt fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>good</span>
  </em>
  <span>; you were running out of Satanic rituals and your God was beginning to show indifference to you. Satan didn’t have much to say to you those days. Satanism was about indulging in your desires and destroying those who annoyed you like a mosquito on your skin. Slapping around your frontman became your new offering to Lucifer. Although it was more of an offering to yourself. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Paula was just the beginning of these cruel, hedonistic offerings to yourself. To ease the swelling. And it felt. Fucking. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Good</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  You became addicted to hurting 2-D; it was only supposed to be a one time thing. Just to toy with the boy a little bit, poke and prod at him like a Voodoo doll, watching like a sadistic hawk for your prey’s frightened reaction. But that’s always what it is, isn’t it? The first one is free, as the drug dealers say, because they know you’ll always come back for more. Your favorite drug wasn’t meth or cocaine. It was hurting 2-D; the high it gave you lasted for weeks, endorphins and serotonin never stopped coming. Even when the high was long over, the clear sorrow plastered on 2-D’s face whenever an interviewer mentioned Paula brought it all speeding back, like a race car at 1000 miles per hour. M1A1, right? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Surprisingly, Paula was a bit difficult to crack at first. Like an egg that wouldn’t just crumble into yolk, no matter how many times you tapped it on the side of a bowl. She tried to avoid your lustful gaze during practice like you would infect her with some type of disease (you’re sure you did when you fucked her raw, but that’s besides the point.) When you licked your lips in that sultry fashion, she saw from the corner of her eye, and soon the cohesive notes she played on her guitar became tangled like hair. Like every egg, she was crackable. You just had to bang her on the bowl instead of tap. You never really cared if you got your hands messy, anyways. When she came bursting onto your fingers you relished in the filth like bacteria. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, you ask. Pull the trigger and let the </span>
  <em>
    <span>boom</span>
  </em>
  <span> echo in the disgusting Kong Studios kitchen. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>So how is the sex, anyways</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Paula answers wordlessly,  a lip curled in anger, slamming down a bag of crips onto the counter, the noise purposely obnoxious. She cocks her head sharply to meet your gaze like a homicidal hawk, her over lined red lips forming into one concise narrow line. Her </span>
  <em>
    <span>eyes</span>
  </em>
  <span>; if looks could kill, hers would be twisting into your stomach lining and slicing your nicotine rotted intestines in half. She growls angrily like a rabid dog and ignores your question. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Really, Murdoc? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Really</span>
  </em>
  <span>? Fucking touching my thigh like that in front of Rusesl, in front of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Stu</span>
  </em>
  <span>? In case you haven’t forgotten, he is my </span>
  <em>
    <span>boyfriend</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she whispers like she’s cursing you with some ancient Pagan spell. Oh, </span>
  <em>
    <span>please</span>
  </em>
  <span>, is all you could think. She hadn’t objected to it or slapped your hand away. In fact, you saw the dark hair on her arms awaken to your touch, and it wasn’t even a lingering touch. Russel would have probably picked up on it if he weren’t too busy in another one of his stupid driveby flashbacks, and the only thing 2-D is concerned about is updating his blog on the new pair of socks he got this week. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, quit the act, love, must be exhausting to pretend you’re on camera all the time. I didn’t mind it,” you reply casually, unfolding your arms and propping one up on the table so your jaw rests in your palm. A subtle mock and flirt. “You didn’t seem to either.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She looks startled by your statement, your effortless reading of her transparent performance. She bristles a bit like a cat and readjusts her posture to appear tall, but she’s small and defenseless with all her walls down. Any other normal loving girlfriend would have no hesitancy to tell you that they love their boyfriend in your examination, but Paula is not a loving girlfriend, and she is not capable of loving 2-D. He’s unsatisfactory on her intellectual and sexual report card; a solid D, appropriately. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She shakes it off like water. “It’s not right,” she murmurs hurridley, unable to gather the balls to meet your demanding gaze. In retrospect, it’s pretty fucking funny of her to say that. She didn’t care about what was morally responsible when she painfully tugged your hair back, promptly unzipped your trousers, and craftily stroked you through your pants, as if she were a carpenter working with the greatest wood. Pun absolutely intended. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You</span>
  </em>
  <span> made that happen.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Who gives a damn about what’s right or wrong. Be honest - do you see yourself with 2-D ten years down the road. See yourself barefoot in the kitchen with a blue haired tyke in your belly? See him coming home to you after a long day of work just to not make you </span>
  <em>
    <span>cum</span>
  </em>
  <span> again?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She ponders this and sighs; she’s picturing that life so vividly, like she’s watching a movie of it. That dreadful, </span>
  <em>
    <span>boring</span>
  </em>
  <span> life, filled with dreadful, </span>
  <em>
    <span>boring</span>
  </em>
  <span> children, with the same dreadful, </span>
  <em>
    <span>boring</span>
  </em>
  <span> sex where she’s left unsatisfied and 2-D’s cum drips out of her legs. She doesn’t like what she sees. She doesn’t want that. Probably doesn’t want to raise kids, not when she has already become 2-D’s mother now. But what really crushed her faithfulness was the concept of never fucking having a good shag, one where every touch felt like a flame in her soul and every moan was a hymn. Shame, then discomfort, and finally disdain flashes on her face like the seasons changing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You get up, the wooden cobwebbed chair screeching to life against the tile. You stalk over to Paula. She was a stubborn bitch, still defying your wishes to meet your eyes, even with how close you got. With less of shoulder length between you two, you saw her swallow and roll her shoulders back, like she was drinking vodka straight for the first time. Pathetic. The fish always takes the bait in the end. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Leaning down slightly, you huskily let your breathing grow shallow and rough, sexual and primal.The heat that radiates between you two is intoxicating, you could easily get drunk on this type of sexual tension, no matter </span>
  <em>
    <span>who</span>
  </em>
  <span> it is. She’s loving it too; this feeling is like riding a rollercoaster for the first time. A sneer as wicked as a witch’s spreads slickly on your face like butter as you take the final blow. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I could make you </span>
  <em>
    <span>satisfied</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” You growl hungrily, starved of your desire, desperate to devour your meal whole. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You walk out. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She comes to you later that night with a stolen goodie bag of Xanax, proudly labeled 2-D. And she commands to get fucked </span>
  <em>
    <span>hard</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Much like your first interaction, she did not answer your questions with words, but with her body. Just as you had thought. The sex was fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>terrible</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>At first, the discovery and aftermath wasn’t entirely victorious. After Russel had found you and beat you till your clothes smelled like blood and your nose cried for mercy, 2-D wandered the halls of Kong like a ghost. When he drifted into the room, he made no sound, quiet and melancholy while he searched for any item that he needed. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, microphones, keyboards, whatever. Though you could not hear him, you could feel his grief; it was freezing cold, like the ice had cracked underneath your feet and you’d fallen into numbing waters, the cold biting at your skin. The chill would tingle your skin each time and came and went. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The cold you felt wasn’t guilt; it was more of being distressingly uncomfortable. When you’re down below the frost blue ice, the same color of his hair, the chill suffocates you rather quickly. First it bleeds into you like a pen in paper, soaking your bones and heart until the frost grips you like a child holding onto his teddy bear. Then, you immediately begin to brainstorm to get out of it. It’s too cold, too bitter to be there in this water. Before you can struggle, the chill paralyzes your limbs. You’re not in control of this situation. You’re not in control of the cold you’re drowning it. It’s your fault you’re trapped in this water prison; if you hadn’t jumped on the ice like it was a trampoline, you wouldn’t be under here. As always, you managed to be saved at the last minute from some omnipotent force. If you stayed there for too long, you would drown. Drowning consists of having to actually deal with 2-D’s anger, his depression, his insufferable grief. You are not his sodding therapist; this is </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span> fault. He wasn’t good enough to satisfy her. And now, he was mourning for a woman whom only mourned from the sex she’d miss with you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The fool always pays the price for his inability of intellect. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s just too bad Kong was haunted with another ghost; the ghost of your money maker blue bird. There were already too many miserable spirits drifting lifelessly through the halls. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t your fault. It couldn’t be your fault. He’d bounce back; you didn’t care if he was a melancholy corpse for the rest of his life, as long as he could sing out the notes you scribbled in your satin notebook. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Okay, maybe you did care, but only because he was depressing to be around. Too freezing, you didn’t see the forecast and went out without a coat. Yeah. That sounds right, right? The anger inside you had simmered down, and the high was fucking euphoric, like tasting golden water from the rivers of Heaven on your way to Hell. But every time his ghost passed near you, the high would dimmen like a flickering light. Suddenly, the holy water would escape from your mouth and your throat would dry into the Sahara. Sobriety would aggressively French kiss you just like Paula would whenever you caught a glimpse of his eyes. Every time you saw his ghost drift aimlessly past you, the sensation of sandpaper grinding against your taste buds would spring to life. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was the first time you had seen them white. You preferred them black; a black hole that would suck all the record company executives in, all the bimbo birds, and even you. When he stood up in that Nottingham parking lot, he was Ying and Yang combined, black and white contorted around itself. The greatest star in the Milky Way galaxy meeting its darkest counterpoint.  It was intoxicating to look at; he was not only a cash cow, but it called to you, pulled you in. It had awoken some spirit in your soulless body. Life had meaning, purpose again besides petty theft and thousands of part time jobs you’d inevitably be fired from. Two black eyes, one big black hole in an otherwise empty galaxy. When you gazed into the whiteness, there was nothing pulling you towards him. The black hole had vanished, and you were left alone in the galaxy, no stars or planets, not even the sun to kiss your fear away. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was fear and discomfort. Fuck, it had scared you. To drown out the fear, you drowned yourself in women and meaningless praise from them, and the high would come roaring back to life like a Harley motorcycle. But sweet </span>
  <em>
    <span>Satan</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the white had frightened you, almost made you soil your trousers. With black, it’s easy. Black lacks everything; it could use the brown of Russel’s skin or the olive green of yours to fill itself up with. He would be content, happy with the colors you and Russel could offer him. White, however, has every color. It’s aware of what it has, every color it could need, why it is white. Black depends. White stands with only itself. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Noodle had arrived in her Fed-Ex crate, like baby Moses in his basket down the river, 2-D had swindled her up and connected with her, like she had imprinted on him. The black came back, then the poltergeist inside him was exorcised, and then returned the screaming euphoria from your favorite drug; making 2-D’s life a living Hell. Your plan had succeeded, and his moping didn’t stick long enough to entirely fuck up your bender. The high had felt extra satisfactory because even though he snapped back to optimism like he had been reborn, he looked at you different. A reincarnation who knew his past life, and knew not to fuck it up like last time. He learned his place; he knew the iron clad boundaries built between you. He had learned that </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> had the power. You were in control. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>owed</span>
  </em>
  <span> you, and he really, </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> learned that everything he touches will inevitably belong to you. Even though he was still a shortsided dummy, he became </span>
  <em>
    <span>obedient</span>
  </em>
  <span>, learned what respect </span>
  <em>
    <span>truly</span>
  </em>
  <span> meant, and you ate that shit up like it was your favorite childhood dessert with a cherry on top. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That power. That </span>
  <em>
    <span>victory</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It was something innate, otherwise, it wouldn’t have felt so fucking perfect. It was tracked all the way back through your bloodline, your ancestors, to the primate mother that birthed the beginning of mankind. It was an ugly birth; the scent of blood and sweat rippled through the air like visible shockwaves. There were angry grunts and desperate moans, squeezing a new life out into the embrace of the Earth. And then, the powerful primate birthed the first child of humanity; it was peace, promise, and power all swindled into the first infant of the homosapiens. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A Gorilla feeling. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You took after the model mother of mankind and agonizingly birthed the beautiful Gorillaz, made in your image, made in that feeling. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he winced at you like that, the black begged for your colors, and you peeled back your banana, exhaling with glee. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Victory</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, it’s not that bad Two-DeEEeeEe. You know, we’re rather adaptable creatures. Of course, it’s also in our nature not to like change. But what’s great about the human race is how quickly we can </span>
  <em>
    <span>adapt</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Easily one of our greatest strengths, don’t forget it! It may feel strange now, but it’s only strange because you- well, little tyke, you’re just not </span>
  <em>
    <span>used to it</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D screams your name bloody murder, banging like a gorilla on the see through glass elevator until the sound “Murdoc” wraps tight around your ribcage and begins to strangle your bones till they almost crack from the pressure. Every time he howls the syllables of your name out, the rope around your ribs gets tighter and the bones beg to express the agony in your own scream. The desperate banging for freedom against the glass sounds like a shotgun being fired right next to your eardrum. You feel sick almost, as if you’d eaten the wrong thing, gotten food poisoning perhaps; you hadn’t eaten, though. You’d just locked your front man in a watery, underground prison, with his greatest fear being his own personal prison warden. And now, your frontman is begging for mercy, screaming like Death has his hand on his shoulder, and you have to watch like the selfish spectator you are. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D wasn’t supposed to wake up. The Boogeyman had stolen him from his dingy flat, who fucking knows why he saved you the trip back to England. Even worse, he saved you from possibly having to deal with the Black Cloud shoving a blade up your arse. The demon hunting for your soul shouldn’t exactly be doing any favors for you, but regardless, he did. When you found him, he was still in his bland suitcase, but clearly confused; when he saw you, you could see the gears rapidly spinning in his head until the dread dawned on him. There are very few times you’ve seen that expression; you wouldn’t get much of it in regular life. Maybe once or twice you’d see it in passing. Mostly, you’d known it in childhood with Hannibal when dad came home drunk and vengeful. It had become common on your shit excuse for an island paradise; like a once rare butterfly that you’d come to catch everyday. That look. That overwhelming emotion piled onto one human face. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was terror.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No…. </span>
  <em>
    <span>No</span>
  </em>
  <span>….,” he gasped like you’d stolen the air out of his lungs, shaking like the trees before a storm. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You let your mouth turn upwards into a toothy, friendly grin; it didn’t work. He gawked at you as if you were a beast with hooves and horns. You don’t know what you expected. You never appeared to be the friendly face type. No one naturally came towards you unless you called them before Gorillaz. Fame only changed that. It didn’t change with the bandmates - </span>
  <em>
    <span>coworkers</span>
  </em>
  <span> you saw everyday. In fact, you probably looked more deranged than you usually do. You’d had nothing to eat for days besides coconuts. You probably looked like fucking Jack Nicholson when he flung his axe into the door; chillingly homicidal and clinically insane. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>Herrrreeee’ss Johnny</span>
  </em>
  <span>!’,you wished you could have cackled. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You didn’t realize your mind had begun to rot like a banana already, the bruised brown spots on your brain. Still, you tried your best to be reassuring. Just like with Noodle, you’d never learned how to comfort; especially not with 2-D. Still, you do try. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Relax, buddy. It’s me, your old friend!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>No</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I told you I didn’t want to come back to Gorillaz, not with what happened on the windmill island. I didn’t want to see </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> again. Murdoc, what did you </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he moaned desperately, his palms digging into the plastic until there was a squishing sound. Like he’d stuck his hands in macaroni and cheese and twisted his fingers into it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wasn’t me who kidnapped you, although whoever did really has an eye out for me,” you replied coolly, scrambling to not let the hurt seep out into your words. Slowly, you inch your right hand to the back of your trouser pocket, and grasp the chloroform cloth tucked away in there. Normally, pencils would be stuck back there for when inspiration struck; weapons had taken its place, rudely kicking them out. When you take it out, the blue haired man squeals like a pig who has slowly watched the slaughterhouse come closer into view. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Now, don’t make this more difficult than this has to be,” you hummed lowly, trying to be both comforting and intimidating. A breathing contradiction. You began to stalk closer to him until your legs transformed it into a sprint. You couldn’t have taken any chances; his shaking palms and outwards leg told you he was going to run from you, and quite frankly, you weren’t in the mood for a game of tag. You grab him and overpower him easily; it is  just as it should be, the dynamic you had established with the little prick a decade ago with the fallen from grace Paula. You had thought the chloroform would have taken him to rest casually, like how an old man passes away in his sleep. Instead, he fought and gripped onto his stream of consciousness like you were the only rock keeping him from falling to death. It felt like you were carrying a rather hateful cat as you dragged him to the bowels of Plastic Beach. Biting, scratching, hissing. He persisted like a fucking cockroach, never resting, clawing onto your body. His claws left scars that would seethe with pain even years later when he avoided your stare. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And although you finally had 2-D down here, trapped in his cage while he roared like a traumatized tiger, it didn’t feel like a job and it didn’t feel real; you pulled him down the stairs and to the elevator, you treated his diseased thrashing like you were just doing a job. It isn’t his nails that are sharply digging into the flesh of your arms. It isn’t your skin that seethes and burns from the nails. It’s not you, it’s not him. You’re not Murdoc Niccals, infamous bassist of Gorillaz. It isn’t happening to you. You tuned it out. You thought of the sweet taste of strawberries and the scent of summer, your brain putting on a Black Sabbath record, letting it swoon you to a blank mind coated with bliss. The screams, the begging, the tears; they weren’t there, they weren’t his. This was the new normal. You told yourself this was a job, it had to be done to get the paycheck. What other point is there to inflict this Hell? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You should know this hurts me just as much as this hurts you,” you whistle casually despite the volcano erupting in your veins. “The quicker you stop your temper tantrum, the more time you have to yourself down here. I don’t think you want to be around me much, anyways,” you laugh bitterly, somehow trying to convince yourself there’s anything light and humorous in this situation. His screams keep echoing back to you, hurling machine gun bullets into the hair fibers of your ear. He doesn’t stop. It was primal, a desire to stay alive, be delivered to safety. He was unapologetically in pain. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pain. That’s what you disliked. That’s what haunted you when you first saw his eyes transform into a blistering snow. You disliked the pain, you disliked seeing the physical remarks of pain. It was easy when it was only mentally inflicted; you knew it had hurt him, but the white blinded you. Like staring into a sun; it hurts, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it hurts, but you can’t find comfort in the shade now. Long lasting pain is what scorches you, what it feels like to touch the metal part of the seat belt after the sun has beaten down on it for hours while you were away. The longer he wails like the creature outside his captivity, the more damaging the burn sizzles out on you. It burns in your chest and your throat mixed with bile. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You still like to think this type of tormenting pain was what the native Vietnamese children must have felt when they saw American planes soaring through their skies. At first, it was terror; this was happening, it was going to happen, the bomb was going to collide with Vietnam’s peaceful forest. The Napalm bomb; highly flammable, gooey like jam, sticky so the flame stuck to flesh easily. The children would run, but the bomb was faster with the intent to devour them whole. Then, there was the sun, and then, there was the flame that took over their body like a disease. Screaming. Boiling. Hot. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pain. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pain wasn’t agony. Not what you experienced in your poor excuse for a childhood. You could say the two are synonymous, and in a way, they are. They’re connected in the same family tree. But agony was when </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> were the one who was in a powerless scenario. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You have the audacity to compare yourself to innocent child victims of a war they had no say in. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You</span>
  </em>
  <span> inflicted this pain. If anything, you were the United States pilot who aimlessly dropped the bomb onto Napalm Girl, captured timelessly by a clueless American photographer. The United States pilot had seen that photo of the naked, screaming child, scorched by his decision. You’re the pilot holding the Polaroid with trembling hands. 2-D transforms back into Stuart Pot in front of you, screaming, sobbing, naked to you in every way besides literal. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pain. Your Napalm girl. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This pain was self inflicted, hence why it wasn’t agony; you never expected agony to dig its claws into your eyes. This was different. You turned on the stove and held your wrist there, and now you’re surprised it’s left a scar on you for eternity. You opened the hatch and looked at the Napalm engulf everything sacred and pure in the world. Self harm wouldn’t be the correct analogy. Not if you had taken his wrist and grounded it into the stove first. You enjoyed the pain, but only if it was administered in small doses. You weren’t lying when you had told him it hurt you just as much as it hurt him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> He wailed and apologized to you, told you what you wanted to hear to unlock the shackles and set him free. To take the bomb back; but it was already dropped. You told yourself you’d develop an acquired taste to seeing him in this much pain. This much </span>
  <em>
    <span>misery</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You didn’t like sex early in the morning. You didn’t like the idea of kissing a man. You didn’t like scotch at the age of 10. You grew to like these things the more you indulged in them, feeding these little things like stray cats you said you wouldn’t keep. You could grow to enjoy this too, just like you had when you saw 2-D’s stupid half eyed face the first time you’d rammed into him with some shitty stolen car. Maybe the pain would cause some sort of high. You could become a junkie for this too. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When you watched his terror stricken eyes fade from black and white, you knew this pain wasn’t like any of those little things. In seconds, you witnessed his eyes turn from a sickening reverse night to day. It wasn’t a hopeful sunrise. It wasn’t even a sunset. It was nothing, as if the sky had given up on its faithful transitions to the earth. You, the pilot, had been tossed into the sticky forest flame. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>hate</span>
  </em>
  <span> that </span>
  <em>
    <span>pain</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Opening the glass elevator door, you see glimmers of hope and black return to his hollow excuses for eyes. But it wasn’t so that your Napalm victim could escape for the hills; it wasn’t even to help soothe the pain that soaked in his burns. He began to get up, sighing with relief from the cool you granted. And then, you stole it all away, vacuumed the ice away from him. You grabbed his twig arm, forced him so that his back was against your chest, and began to stuff his mouth with chloroform cloth like he’s an American Thanksgiving turkey. He had let his guard down; it was easy to pacify him now. His body cried for rest so that his brain wouldn’t demand to keep on. When he quiets, you do give thanks to whomever is listening. Like a colonizer, you stole every cooling healing property you managed to get your hands on. The soaring burn and pain you felt slowly bleeds itself out on the floor. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Relief had embraced your weak body. The sticky napalm fire had been extinguished. Your Napalm girl was quiet. The third degree burns still popped out to you like a single red dot on an otherwise white paper. But it was okay. It was quiet; the atmosphere still smelled of tar and fire, but it was beginning to drift away.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s not too bad, you told 2-D as you had thrown him into his cell. You whisper your own words back to yourself like it’s a proverb. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s not too bad. It’s not too bad. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It is that bad. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>You avoided 2-D as much as you could on the island. Like he had some sort of disease that was transmitted through solemn, sorrowful glances. You’d see him from time to time when Cyborg’s wires randomly malfunctioned. One of her many duties was serving him his food. The only reason you’d interact with him is if you needed help from your alleged friend to sing a demo you’d thought of; even then, you wanted to keep him quarantined in the recording booth while he sang like a perfect siren on ocean rocks. His voice made him sound mystical, truly lost at sea and craving for someone to crash into his shore more than a woman on her rag craves chocolate. People ate that shit up; </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> ate that shit up, and his talent was distracting enough to ignore the white that infested in his eyes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His eyes became whiter than white, like a Mime’s face. Porcelain. The windows to the soul that had no landscape past it. But when you did see him, when you </span>
  <em>
    <span>made</span>
  </em>
  <span> him perform for you, his singing was the water putting the fire out. Extinguishing the pain, whatever. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Still, something should have occurred to you that you should have been kinder. Even when you were viscous to 2-D years before he’d been dropped off at Plastic Beach, he would still try and be an obedient little pup. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yes, Murdoc, I’ll help you write lyrics. Yes, Murdoc, I’m sorry for acting like a little shit, Murdoc. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He made conversation when you didn’t, offered to listen to what made you slap him in the first place, tell stupid jokes to make you fondly ruffle his hair for validation. That golden, honey glazed glow that tasted like milk chocolate. It only existed between the two of you after a screaming and slapping match, like you were just actors in a TV show, it was all a game. You liked it because you never had to apologize. It was never written in the script for your character, only reserved for his. You liked that. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now, in the crummy recording booth of Plastic Beach that reeked of garbage and saltwater, he sang, and he took a beating, and he left. And it bothered you; your costar had begun to get lazy on his part. Like he’d forgotten his lines, or worse, hadn’t even attempted to memorize them again after being off set for so long. This was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> what you had agreed to. You signed another contract for the same type of dynamic that had existed between you for 12 years; since Noodle popped out, since 2-D realized you </span>
  <em>
    <span>owned</span>
  </em>
  <span> him. So, you went off script as well. Beat him till his face was littered with spots that were as blue as his hair, without any real reason to because he never stupidly misbehaved anymore. Not like he used to. And unlike the dynamic before, he didn’t ask why, and he didn’t fucking say </span>
  <em>
    <span>sorry</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That was the new rewritten script that existed. It was as if it were a law of physics, an unbeatable known fact. Sweet Satan, that reboot sucked. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After his habitual recording session and beating, 2-D would pathetically flop out of the remodeled Gorillaz studio like he was a slinky toy; short compared to his normal stretched form and floundering about on his way back to prison. Just like a slinky toy, he’d make a sound too every time he stepped; it was a groan, or a whimper, or a sob. Beat him till his face reflects the colors of a sunset, then roll the three sided dice, and you’ll get one of those possibilities. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You would have felt guilt earlier if it weren’t for the white powder tucked away under your pillow, like you were a child keeping some type of secret; maybe it was just some stolen candy from your mum’s hidden stash. Something innocent and childish like that. It was a secret at first, but you stopped caring when you realized there was no one else that would really try and stop you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was good coke. Really, </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> good coke. None of that posh shit you got crumbs of back in Stoke. Not even when you were at the peak of your party crusade. You’d stolen it from those bumbling fools who dared to call themselves pirates, but holy </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, they knew how to craft good coke. Like they’re carpenters of wicked drugs. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You liked the burn that coursed through your nasal cavity into your bloodstream. It was that feeling that you got after you’d shoplift for the fun of it. Exciting, invigorating, comfortably numb with euphoria. The best part was you didn’t have to worry about the sobs below the floorboards, or the metal puppet resembling your alleged daughter buzzing in the corner. You didn’t have to think of the white in 2-D’s eyes, the pain that sliced your skin open, the bomb that wiped out his hope. Fuck, it felt </span>
  <em>
    <span>good</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and the whole world stopped what it was doing just to let you feel alive. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was the cocaine’s fault. Not yours! The cocaine made you not think about it too much; if anything, it was a new part of the little rewritten script between you two. A new show. Exciting. Vigorating. The most exciting parts of your days so far had been when gunpowder soaked through the walls and the dinghy floorboards, and a bullet came firing towards your head at the speed of light. Shoplifting and running from the pigs from the local police station. That’s what coke and assassination attempts felt like. But even that became predictable; this was something entirely new, like you had just discovered there were more than three television networks on the TV.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a recording day. You expected the same old routine; scream spit into his ears and command him to sing, have him sing, find something wrong with it - </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> - then fling him like you were an aggressive little girl who didn’t want her dolly anymore. You’d written something nice, coming down from a high; not your power abuse high, but the cocaine. Empire Ants. Was fucking fantastic and you’d already worked out the music recordings in a blackout state. So, same shit. Rise and repeat, right on schedule. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He does the only thing he’s worth for; singing. Far too melancholy than you would have liked. It just needed to be the perfect amount of wistfulness and hope swirled into one, like you’re combining dark navy blue and white so it forms the color of a bright sky. It sounded like he just made fucking brown because he mixed too much agnst in there. Fuck him.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That was shit. Sounded like you’ve just gotten your prostate removed and you can’t get it up when you’re trying to shag. Do it again,” you chortle out as the plastic straw you’re using dries up all the coke left on some broken glass mirror you’d found rotting in the garbage. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sniiiiffff.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Oooh, there it went. It’s strength hiit you like a bullet train and sizzled into your veins. You look up to see your front man; you can’t hear him singing, but maybe it was because of coke’s persistence in getting your attention slowly focused on it alone, like one of your many jealous groupies. It’s blinding and blurry, then your eyes boot back up to life again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D is not singing. His fists are just as white as his swollen eyes. Fuck him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are you deaf or just fucking daft? Could never really tell, you know. Although it seems your incompetence is getting worse by the </span>
  <em>
    <span>ssssss</span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>sodding</em>
  </b>
  <span> minute. How hard is it to get in the booth and sing a couple of notes? Are you too mentally handicapped to handle that now?” You lean back in your swivel chair that threatens to fall apart like a sand castle under your weight, idly tossing your prized Cuban heels up on the antique desk. Your new makeshift little thrown  and he has the </span>
  <em>
    <span>audacity</span>
  </em>
  <span> to disrespect the king in front of his court. Shameful. Downright atrocious. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span> him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D frowns in a fashion that is </span>
  <em>
    <span>way</span>
  </em>
  <span> too ugly for your liking, almost like you’re watching a pit bull snarl from the confines of an aluminium cage. This is new. Normally, it’s like you’ve taken him to the pound and he compliantly laid down like a sick good boy to get euthanized. Now, he’s awake, and possessed with the rabies despite the warning signs that showed you he needed a shot. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are we </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever</span>
  </em>
  <span> going to talk about what happened, Murdoc?” He whispered his inquiry with something akin to a cocktail of rage and heartache. Grief. That’s what it was. Who cares? You didn’t. You’re on the greatest coke you’ve ever snorted and you’re an atom bomb made of mania and depression. Time is ticking. You’re about to explode if he keeps fiddling around with your wires like this. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know what you’re talking about”, you lie casually through your teeth, letting the tension rise in the studio like smoke from a wildfire. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What happens next both startles you and intrigues you. A moth to a flame, perhaps. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D flings his fist against the recording booth glass savagely, like he’s that same pit bull gnashing through the fence with his saliva drenched fangs. You’ve never seen him get so angry. You didn’t think he’d have it in him. You snip one of his wires, he snips one back. For the first time it had been like that tit for tat expression. You shagged his girlfriend, he respected and revered you. You almost murdered him, he respected and revered you. You locked him in a prison below the sea with his greatest fear, he respected and - you get the idea. It was always tit, never tat in return. That should have made you giggle, but it didn’t. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tit for tat. A new line written in the script. A new television show to watch after mindlessly reciting the ABCs with the Sesame Street gang. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You had once told the press, “Entertain me, or go home.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span> was what you called entertainment. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Noodle, Murdoc. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Noodle</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You know, our guitarist you put a hit out on.” 2-D’s throat spasms uncontrollably when he barked the words out, like he’d been stung by a bee. Fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>ouch</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You feel the ugly truth hammer into your skin like nails. He’s digging his fingers into an already infected wound, making puss ooze out of it. Didn’t he get the memo all those years ago when he prodded at Noodle; don’t fucking pick at another person’s wound. You already messed around with your scar far too much those days. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something primal and hungry engulfs you like a starving chimpanzee. Cocaine mixed with this red rage isn’t a good combination; he was playing with fire and he was about to get third degree burns. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“In case you’ve forgotten, although I shouldn’t expect you to remember it anyways, Noodle agreed to the plan. Thought it was the best course of action to really drive the thematic goal of Demon Days home. How was I supposed to know-”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN”, 2-D screams back at you. He’s already on fire and he doesn’t give a damn; you can’t tell if you just boiled up the pan or he’s some kind of masochist waiting for you to strike him with lightning. You </span>
  <em>
    <span>couldn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> have known. It was supposed to go according to plan, you never miscalculated, and there was no coming back from miscalculating. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D swallows and spasms again. Twitching. Itching with hunger to commit the act of defying you. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, everything felt so blurry, so unreal. You aren’t here, this isn’t him. This was a job and part of the show. Right? You never liked being left silent, so you opened your lips again only for your front man to slice the unspoken words away with a flaming sword. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She was just a kid, Murdoc. She chose art over safety for </span>
  <em>
    <span>you.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Because she was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>kid</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he whimpers out like a puppy who’s been kicked, despite the pit bull persona he showed earlier. He’s weak too. There’s some hope of having power over this argument, steering the ship like you always have. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But ‘she was just a kid’ echoes in your head like villainous church bells chiming and spreading their sound all across the cities of your mind. Something sharp and needle-like stabs you in the back. Black begins to take over your vision like a maniacal tyrant again, conquering reality as you know it and eradicating its existence entirely. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D contorts into Russel’s disapproving stare, your father’s enraged screaming mouth with wolf-like flangs, and Noodle’s big brown eyes that reflect the wild flames you created. Reality is crumbling like you’ve broken it in half - like it was bread, and the crumbs are tumbling to the floor around you. You can hear 2-D’s voice but it’s muffled now, like he’s desperately crying through a walkie talkie, but he just can’t reach you. The signal is broken. The weight of the world impales you.  You’re watching the world crash and burn around you, and you knew in that moment how Noodle must have felt on the windmill island pummeling to its demise. Blood pumping with so much adrenaline it could fit into a cargo plane. Panic rising like lava in a volcano. Nothing but the need to </span>
  <em>
    <span>escape. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pain and anguish all at once, combining until a frequency so high burns your eardrums to where you feel like blood is flowing from them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“ANSWER ME</span>
  </em>
  <span>!”, snaps the breaking up walkie talkie tearing through the shattered reality you suffocate in. More static. More black and whites and loud noises and the vomit inducing smell of the Pub you lost your virginity at from the measly age of 9. Static like you accidentally pressed a button on the TV controller in your sleep and you’ve been rudely woken up to it at four in the morning. Static like you’ve taken a razor and slashed it down the vein of your arm. The sound of Noodle’s sobbing pleas for help are drenched in the smell of Static, like an old lady put on too much perfume and it’s all you can fucking smell anymore with your fucked up nose. Static tearing through the fabric of your senses until you’re drowning, you’re in flames, you’ve been gassed in a chamber. Hooked up to a fucking medievel torture device and have had your limbs pulled apart by the crushing weight of static. It’s what you’ve become now. Static. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Just give me one answer, </span>
  <em>
    <span>please</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Murdoc. You fuckin’ owe met that,” the walkie talkie angry pitbull hybrid barks again, before the device broke off again. You see figures of your frontman, but they glitch and blend in with the static. 2-D always sounded like some sort of cyberspace name and now he’s breaking the code of this new reality of static you are beginning to grudgingly accept. If he’s a glitch, then you must be too. Error in the code. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I remade her. I love her,” is all you can whisper back as the static chomps on your intestines like it’s an impatient ravenous tiger past feeding time. The walkie talkie goes silent with no noise at all and that is what really makes you want to tarnish your cuntish cheetah print thong with piss. Silence while static begins to simmer down and return from the cesspools where it was birthed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Burning windmill island, here you are, cursed to be in its grace. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>THIS ISN’T LOVE!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” the fully pink fleshed 2-D you’re more familiar and comfortable with transcends into view, like fog lifting up as the sun peaks through the clouds. It sounds like a blessing and a curse all at once, like your creator is commanding your attention. You’re in purgatory now. Purgatory is worse than Hell because you’re stuck on your arse waiting in solace. Waiting for the next blow. Waiting for your wounds to heal on a battlefield. Waiting for your fate to be decided. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“This.. it just isn’t love,” he whimpers, although it's like a rotten drug laced with vile disgust and hatred.  “You can’t love. You don’t know </span>
  <em>
    <span>how</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You fucking hate admitting it. You would never say it out loud. But you can’t deny it any longer when you’re watching your heinous behavior flashback to you like he caught it on tape. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D was right. This - you re-birthed and gentrified this whole landfill, shit excuse for an island just so you could have </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You went to Hell and danced with death to find your daughter. You didn’t find her. And you somehow thought that just finding her would fix </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything </span>
  </em>
  <span>you did. It would be like you just lazily slapped a Hello Kitty band-aid onto a bullet wound and called it a day. After all, that’s what you’ve always done and it did stop some of the bleeding just enough to pump out another record. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You went to the ashes of your best music video set just to find the remaining pieces of her left. You wanted to honor her memory, truly. But you realize what the cyborg truly is now. It’s a fucking terrible memorial. You buried a cross near her death place, just like useless people do when a person dies from a car crash to make themselves feel like an activist; except this cross was made out of her and could shoot bullets out of her mouth to defend the man who executed her death. How damned is that? A walking shell of metal created from her flesh. Its main purpose is to protect her murderer. Absolutely damned to the gutters of Hell.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You lied to people who would gut children in their sleep if said children took one pound from them. You lied and took their money that was birthed from incessant murder and suffering and took it to an island so far away from humanity that they would travel for days just to get it back. You didn’t apologize to Russel or 2-D when they left the premise of Kong Studios for the final time, unbeknownst to them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You created a whole separate planet to isolate yourself from humans you’ve hurt, humans who now hungered for revenge. You created this intergalactic planet just so you could have </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> - a comrade like 2-D who hated you like one of Stalin’s former besties who just secretly fucking hated him. You created it and the cyborg to slam the door of guilt that was left wide open and empty. You created it to reclaim your former glory and return to your throne made of alcohol, Gorillaz albums, and false prophecies that told you that you were a God amongst the rest of your kind. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But it doesn’t work when you hear the truth from him impales you with an iron sword. Your lousy throne was just like the little pig whose house was built from straws; easily demolished from one truthful puff of honest wind. You sit in the ashes of what used to be a throne. It was like it was never truly there to begin with. All an illusion. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When your illusion shatters, the glass shards of truth slide and twist maliciously into your eyes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D was right. 2-D wasn’t allowed to be right about anything if you were in the wrong. It’s just how things worked, the silent contract he defeatedly signed to you 10 years ago. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If was fucking embarrassing, humiliating, mortifying. All of those things, like those one word reviews from critics Hollywood advertisers liked to put on horror movie posters. It wasn’t a tv show between you and 2-D anymore; it was a never ending, unpredictable plot line with the same terror of the Exorcist. And it wasn’t fucking ending. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You could not allow it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You </span>
  <em>
    <span>would</span>
  </em>
  <span> not allow it. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Power hungry. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Let’s talk about that phrase for a second. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Power hungry, according to the Oxford English dictionary, is defined as “having a strong desire for power.” However, that is contradictory to what the word “hunger” means. Hunger is a necessary drive for a human to survive; the stomach is empty, it needs more energy for food to continue, so in order for the body to get what it needs, you start to feel uncomfortable without it. And if you’re uncomfortable from hunger for an extended period of time, you die. Hunger implies a lack of something one needs to </span>
  <em>
    <span>survive</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You needed power to survive more than ever on the island. You tried to eat and inject the foul power into your veins, get that high you loved, but on Plastic Beach it no longer felt the same. Even when you forced 2-D into a land of his greatest nightmares stalking his every move, he no longer respected you like he had before. He acted like you mentioned before; when he was nervous now, he became viscous like an abused dog at the pound. This wasn’t the power you liked because he would depressingly fight you for it. It wasn’t the power from before. You’ve taken notice of something else as well; there was no Present on Plastic Beach, it was only </span>
  <em>
    <span>Before</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>After</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Before</span>
  </em>
  <span> was previous to events of Noodle’s supposed death. After was everything that happened next. Where your empire crumbled piece by piece like the erosion of mountains. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You needed that power because without it, you would die. And there were many, </span>
  <em>
    <span>many</span>
  </em>
  <span>, precautions you took that made sure you wouldn’t die isolated and ashamed. You hungered for power. Starved for it like you were a cannibal who yearns for the taste of human flesh . You transformed into an ugly beast desperate to keep itself alive. You were both literally and figuratively an alcoholic that would perish if you did not have a certain amount of your favorite drink everyday. And 2-D’s little speech to you was like he picked up the last remaining bottle of your power left and slurped it down his hatch in one fucking sitting. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Power hungry. God, that was and still is </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D was already in isolation. As previously mentioned, you only ever interacted with him when you needed him to sing. You can survive in isolation if you try hard enough; it might wear you down, but as long as you have something to distract yourself, you won’t be entirely miserable. Like a baby with its pacifier, tasks like watching movies and making music will soothe the aching muscles crying for the presence of another. You didn’t like what you did, but an addict values their fix more than anything else. Morals could go to Hell. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You ordered Cyborg to remove any tangible object that could be used for entertainment in 2-D’s prison cell. The Blu-Ray dvd player with every single zombie movie cluttered into a disk folder. His casios and melodicas. The curtain to his window that shielded him from the sight of the whale who eyed him like prey. It was perfect; he would crack, become subservient again, a little puppet you can string around to follow your script. Crack a few lighthearted jokes here and there just to cheer you up. Just like before. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You heard the desperate pleas that could only belong to your pathetic front man from below the sea. Cyborg was removing every aspect of what made his miserable life worth living for. There would be no life for 2-D, only a body for a muted soul that screamed to be free. You giggled like a love sick little girl on Valentines Day. He’d have to endure Hell the way you’ve always experienced it; soul crushing and suffocating. Poison gas would clog his mind like shit in a toilet, you wouldn’t have to witness the white his eyes shone, and you’d have power back. You would finally, </span>
  <em>
    <span>truly</span>
  </em>
  <span> become unbeatable. He may have won the last battle, but you would never, </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever</span>
  </em>
  <span> despairingly hang up a white flag in the midst of a war zone. You are the Hydra in Greek mythology; 2-D stupidly chops off one your copious heads and two replace it in its honor. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Cyborg delivered meals to him, ones you made that were good. A good meal would give him something to look forward to so he wouldn’t think it was that </span>
  <em>
    <span>awful</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> You didn’t record for an entire week. You drowned yourself in rum and narcissism until it soaked through the floorboards and into 2-D’s new inadequate home. When you got bored or depressed, you’d look to the glow of the golden sun setting each night on Plastic Beach, and it would remind you that you did have something left in all of this mess; you were no longer hungry. The discomfort had vanished; you were at your peak of survival in a world who tried its hardest to kill you.  You were stuffed with cocaine and any other type of drug you could abuse, and the best one was power. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But drugs cloud your vision and power was no exception. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You didn’t expect what actually happened to occur. You’d instructed Cyborg as clear as a Sunday school teacher to make sure the necessary precautions would be taken. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You miscalculated. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The day had been deceivingly warm with peppy blue skies, no clouds in your line of sight. Normally, you’re used to blue skies not meaning anything; back at home in England, there would be blue skies, but when you stepped outside it was like you were in the fucking North Pole. It was even rarer for Plastic Beach to have beautiful weather, and although you preferred storms and rain, it was beginning to become an all too real metaphor for your mental state.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, you took advantage of this newfound joy the weather had blessed you with. You wrote Superfast Jellyfish with just enough pessimism for your liking, rewired the Cyborg, and decided to start a radio show. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was 10 pm. You misplaced wires bursting with electricity in the lighthouse. You were trying to get a signal, anyone with a functional brain and soul to hear you get up on a soapbox to give a sermon about the record; about the island. About how the life from </span>
  <em>
    <span>before</span>
  </em>
  <span> had died in a fiery blaze, and a deadly phoenix had risen from the ashes to form </span>
  <em>
    <span>after</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Some company would be nice, but not the kind of company that wants you dead or chomped alive by a whale. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, you concentrated, and you worked, and you were so </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking</span>
  </em>
  <span> close to getting the signal until the wooden door to the lighthouse blast open from the familiar sound of metal hands. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The prisoner is unresponsive,” states the Cyborg without anything resembling humanity in her voice, as per usual. Robotic and silver was what her words were made of, just like her feet, hands, and face. What’s that phrase people use when trying to get others to be sympathetic to cold blooded serial killers? Ah, yes, a “product of their environment.” That’s Cyborg, alright. Made of metal and garbage and it’s reflective in everything she does. Including the bidding you have her do. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well, then wake him up. Can’t you see I’m fucking busy? Go back down there, shake the sod until he’s awake, fucking spoonfeed him if you have to. I don’t pay you to just give up on what I tell you to do. Actually, I don’t pay you at all. Right, point is, get him to eat his dinner like a good boy. Oh, and get me some more rum while you’re at it. I’ve got a long night ahead of me that </span>
  <em>
    <span>could</span>
  </em>
  <span> have been short if you would just do what you are told to do.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I attempted such activities, sir, but he was still unresponsive. He was making strange noises, similar to the noise pirates make after I have shot them.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That familiar cold sensation sweeps into your veins like an aggressive broom. Bleeding icy cold intuition tells you something is </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Deeply wrong, and now you’re under the ice again, fighting to break free and </span>
  <em>
    <span>survive</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You witnessed your brother making those same noises on your family couch littered with mold, and you timidly blinked through traumatized tears as you witnessed medical professionals steal him from your home. Uncomfortable, lacking in uncertainty, the fate no longer in your hands. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“There was a pill bottle with the cap unscrewed on his bedside table.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That damned robot just fucking dropped a </span>
  <em>
    <span>bomb</span>
  </em>
  <span> on you. You’re pitiful and heated and on </span>
  <em>
    <span>fire</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You’re still trapped under the ice, but it is not the slow descent to the bowels of the night dark lake you’re used to. You’re used to miraculously being saved by other forces; always another person diving below just to drag you out, and you never ever thank them. Now, you have the insatiable hunger to </span>
  <em>
    <span>rage</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Claw your way out of the ice and throw someone else below it; </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I TOLD YOU TO TAKE EVERYTHING REMOTELY SUSPICIOUS OR ENTERTAINING OUT OF HIS ROOM, YOU IDIOTIC HUNK OF METAL,” you spit and seethe, marching like a storm trooper to the robot at the door, puffing yourself up like a frightened cat as you stand over your worst creation. She meets your ravenous glare head on and for a moment, you think she returns the look with the intent to kill. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Cyborg stands pin straight like the perfect, unbothered soldier she was made to be. And </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> makes you want to smother your hand into her face as she pleads not to drown under the frosty waters. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He told me it was necessary for him to sing, sir. We cannot have anything interfere with the prisoner’s ability to sing.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You wished you had the ability to program her to have some fucking common sense. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Dizzy. So dizzy. Like you just got off the Teacup ride at Disney Land. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s all you can feel and all you know when you clumsily sprint across the island with two things on your mind; the injectable Naloxone kit kept smartly next to the elevator at all times in case the occasion did rise, and 2-D. There’s running, but it doesn’t feel like you are actually doing the running. Instead, you feel like a voyeur watching yourself gallop from the outside. You blink rapidly. Far too many times as you attempt to get anything into view; the colors are more vibrant now, your breath ragged like worn clothes, and the scent of saltwater as you slam the metal door open to your plastic palace. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Naloxone kit. There it is, singling itself out to you in its bright orange color. So bright. Like it was a freshly picked orange fruit from the only fertile tree in a wasteland. Your hands stumble around in an attempt to grab it, your legs being just as clumsy, like you were a toddler who had just learned to walk. Finally. It’s in your hands and you’re in the poorly made elevator, slamming the button that leads to 2-D like it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever had the pleasure of touching. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Slow. The elevator moves at the pace of a goddamn snail. Slow, so slow, and you keep assaulting the button with every drop of energy in your body. You notice the cool grey blue color of the elevator and study it like a student in a library. Then, you think of 2-D. You think of his eyes really being lifeless. You think of his laugh and his goofy smile and his ability to cheer you up from before. You think of his neck becoming blue from your homicidal grasp. You think of his screams for help. You think of his hateful glares and his choked sobbing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You think of Stuart Pot, and the way you replaced him with a copy of his former self. You think of having to bury him underneath the growing pile of garbage the island collects like a hoarder. You think of his body decomposing and becoming one with the garbage. You think about how he would die isolated and alone and it wasn’t what he deserved. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He didn’t deserve </span>
  <em>
    <span>you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s a drop in your stomach because of this. The feeling you get at the top of a rollercoaster right as you’re about to fall. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Please, </span>
  <em>
    <span>please</span>
  </em>
  <span> don’t let me fall,” you sniveled through tears you didn’t even know that existed.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s a satisfying </span>
  <em>
    <span>ping</span>
  </em>
  <span> that lets you know you’ve finally arrived at your desired destination. Even though it was just running from one side of an already small island to another, it felt like you ran a marathon continuously across the United States because you destroyed the man who had finally made a life for himself. You did this. You killed him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Not yet. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You barge in and see 2-D’s body transformed to the color of his hair; blue. He has blue lips and fingertips, bruises you gave him that have bloomed into blue spots across his body. Like he had some kind of blue chickenpox. Blue around his closed eyes. But it’s fading, like it’s becoming a memory the longer you watch. He always looked like a corpse to you ever since the fateful day at a Nottingham parking lot. But this - this was different. You felt like you were staring at an angel who had its wings slashed off by God. It’s like he’s been amputated from what made him </span>
  <em>
    <span>him- </span>
  </em>
  <span>there should have been his blood painted on the walls, but instead pills had infested the carpet like weeds. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You don’t feel power hungry anymore; you feel like you’re gonna vomit all of the power you overindulged in. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything else is a flash, it moves in blurs with vision hazy and distracted. It’s no easy task, prying the orange top off the blessed naloxone vial, bumbling through the process of filling the correct amount into the syringe. It’s not easy when you take the syringe in your trembling hand, briefly remarking how cartoonishly big it is. It’s not easy when 2-D gargles incoherent babbling through spit and Xanax. It’s not easy when the pain awakens in you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You tear back the fabric of 2-D’s shirt like an over zealous tailor and wince at the pink and blues of his flesh. Before you know it, you stab the flesh so furiously you could have passed as a fucking serial instead of a captor desperete for your former friend newly transformed hostage to wake up from his Xanax coma. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then, there’s a sharp gasp and a jolt of his body until he’s sitting up. Wild. Deranged. If he walked out into the streets you would have assumed he had just escaped from the psych ward. Whatever it is, it’s the sign of survival and nearly shaking the hands of the Grim Reaper. You remember when Russel showed you that photo of the Reaper creeping behind him like a carnivore spotting fresh meat. You remember the ghoulish tingle in your throat when it dried up like fruit in the sun. You remember the intuition of being watched by a force you could no longer fight. And it’s written all over 2-D’s face like a headline in a newspaper. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He looks at you, back to the culprit pill bottle lying innocently on the lime green carpet, then back to you. He gazes into your shriveled soul for a moment, judging it, and his eyes flicker from black to white. It reminds you of those cheap fluorescent lights in back alleyways behind some shady nightclub; barely holding a light, constantly going back from bright to dark, like its fucking bipolar or something. That’s what his eyes were doing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m so-”, vomit the same color as your skin, slaps your face and dribbles into your mouth a little like melted ice cream before you can finish your shit apology. It tasted like mushed up pancakes with revenge salted in there. Probably what you deserved. You didn’t care you had lost your power again. You weren’t power hungry anymore; you just wanted him </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ll talk to you about everything when I’m ready”, is all your frontman gurgles out, and you know what he means. He’ll talk to you about music, about the island, about the bounty hunter pirates that float around the corner every second. But </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything</span>
  </em>
  <span> - this event, the windmill island, Noodle, Cyborg Noodle.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he’s ready doesn’t mean when you’re ready. Now, on 212 Wobble Street, you tally up the days from his attempt and the current date, trying to estimate when he will be ready to have that talk he once begged you for. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Blue. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Blue, despite all the horrible memories it has been tainted with, has always been your favorite color. You used to say it was scarlett or black, something to hold up to the mask you always presented to the public eye. But that was another one of your many lies. Most people would consider that type of lie trivial; it ultimately didn’t matter in the long run, but it was still an odd thing to lie about, because who cares, it’s just your favorite color. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But it </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span> matter to you. The first time you opened up about the truth of your favorite color was on Plastic Beach, and it was one of the few good things you opened up about on that island. Inside yourself, you opened up ugly, hideous doors with monsters hidden in them. But your favorite color, blue, was not one of them. Blue is such an innocent story for you. You love blue. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was 1978 in Stoke on Trent, and you were </span>
  <em>
    <span>excited</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Because Hannibal was going somewhere, somewhere exciting and grown up, and you were never allowed to tag along. But this time, Sebastian wanted </span>
  <em>
    <span>both</span>
  </em>
  <span> of you out of the house. Hannibal was always a brother who put up a fight, and arguments were no exception. Every argument you saw him in out on the street, it quickly turned from a tornado of crude insults to a tornado of punches. Hannibal liked to argue and loved a fight more than he loved heroin. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was always one exception to this rule, and it was Sebastian Niccals. Hannibal could not fight with your father. You see, good ole’ dad loved brutalizing his children just as much as Hannibal loved a good old fashioned brawl. Hannibal was always scared of a fight with dad; he kissed arse to him to avoid a fight and maybe strike gold with Sebastian’s approval. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, that’s how 12 year old you ended up at your first concert, hastily smuggled in by Hannibal with a few snide insults hurled at you from his cooler, older friends. Just as quickly as you had arrived at the venue with Hannibal, he abandoned you by yourself in a sea of sweaty party goers waiting for the time of their lives. The Clash was performing, and you </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span>, really liked them. Even though you knew Hannibal was going, a measly little rodent like you never </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever</span>
  </em>
  <span> expected to actually go with him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Before you knew it, all members were on stage and began to perform Cheat, and you were thrust into moshing and screams and genuine riot behavior. And all you could do was stare; for the first time you felt nothing but genuine glee, and at something so fucking perfect you can’t put it into words. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Music</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and you were watching it </span>
  <em>
    <span>happen</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Even though you listened to records from behind the thin walls of your home, music always seemed like a myth; something you heard about through others. And all you wanted when listening to it was to experience it, because it was just so fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>awesome.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In that moment, in the hurricane of chaos and loud pumping blood and bass guitar, you sat in the eye of it and saw for the first time, something that looked like hope. You looked up and saw blue, the blue of the lights and the sky. You stood in the eye of that hurricane, and you felt hope. Because if you could stand in the eye of someone else’s man made hurricane and survive, it meant you could create your own eye of the hurricane. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Blue. The color of the lights. The color of music. The color of hope. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You lay in your cheap IKEA bed on 212 Wobble Street and you envision the blue of the lights, trying to dust off the film of your memory, desperately wanting it to play back to you. Even if it’s grainy, or you can’t remember the faces of those around you, or you can’t even if the film didn’t pick up on all those songs played that fateful night. The clearest picture your memory creates in film is the bright blue cascading against the walls, floor, and faces of those around you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Blue. That’s why it’s your favorite color. Despite all the fucked up associations you have with it now, you can’t feel anything but gratitude to the color at the end. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Christ, you need another melatonin cause it’s 4 am and you’ve gotten to the point where you’re reliving the happy childhood memories you wish you had a better grasp on. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You creep down the stairs so agile you could be a cat, but the floorboards still creak like old bones and the pains of the past. It reminds you of the floorboards of Kong, and you used to really like that. You liked haunted houses because it reminded you that you would never really be alone, there would always be someone watching out for you. You don’t hunger for power now. Comfort has taken its place, and you’re not sure what’s worse, because both of those things are something you never truly had, besides in a superficial sense.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When you reach the end of the steps and tiptoe to the kitchen, you see 2-D sitting tiredly at the table, and he scares you so bad you jump back like an animal. He’s quiet and lost in thought and </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> fucking exhausted. Everything about his posture screams it to you; his back is bent in the same shape of an unpeeled banana. Fuck, he has always been scary looking, but now more than ever; insomnia has begun to rip his sanity away as it has done to you before. There are dark blacks that swirl under his eyes that mix with purples and blues like a gothic painting. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D is usually always alert of your presence; he’s never just ignored you like this. It wasn’t because he particularly cared for you, it was more of a survival technique just to make sure he’d get away from you in one piece. So it’s odd to see him lacking in anything but immediate attention, like a soldier to his drill sergeant. Lost in thought.  He’s never really been racked with a copious amount of thought either. He proudly admitted that years ago for Cass Brown’s little biography for Gorillaz. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D’s eyes are grey, not entirely white. You can’t tell if it’s just the lighting of the room consumed by night, with gold light from the street posts sneaking its way into the kitchen. But it’s an ashy grey and incredibly wistful. It’s fitting for him, more fitting than black. Like smoke and fire, him and grey belong together. There’s something wet in them too, and every time he blinks, it dissipates only for it to slowly come flooding back. Like how when you pick at a scab and wipe the blood away, but the blood fills the wound again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s a bit too much for you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You turn to crawl back into your crypt, but those damned floorboards throw a tantrum underneath your feet, and now it’s 2-D’s turn to be startled. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Murdoc?” Your name starts strong on his lips but snaps halfway through like a twig, right where the syllables separate between </span>
  <em>
    <span>Mur</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Doc</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Just going back to bed. Continue with your weird meditation or whatever you like to do,” you groan from a place of exhaustion. Exhaustion physically from lack of sleep, and exhaustion mentally just from </span>
  <em>
    <span>looking</span>
  </em>
  <span> at the eerily silent poor boy. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m ready to talk now.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s like he’s tased you with a stun gun, the way you’re physically stopped from stomping back up to safety under your duvet. Words from him are more powerful than any post overdose vomit or punch he could give to you. You chokingly swallow a bitter medicine you hadn’t even realized existed in your throat before turning around, wanting to hurl it up on the already disgusting kitchen floor. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D’s eyes are still misty like the fog you see in graveyards as he stands up, and you’re reminded of how big he is compared to someone like you. His eyelashes flutter softly like a butterfly’s wings as he studies you. You probably look like a dissected frog to him right now, the curious weird kid who likes taking apart animals for some reason. That’s what this is - you’re the caged wild animal to him now, and it gets him off somehow to see you cut into pieces in front of him. Freak. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Faceache</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Those are the words that squirm to get out of your mouth and into the air, but they die on your tongue right as you part your lips to speak them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Come with me,” he demands. That’s unlike 2-D; he doesn’t demand. He was never the demanding type, you were always the one who executed demands from him. 2-D asks politely and waits for approval. A rope coils tightly around your throat and nausea builds in your belly. Your first instinct is to ask </span>
  <em>
    <span>where</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Maybe it’s because you’re just a naturally untrusting person, or because 2-D seems so evolved compared to before. Whatever it is, you hesitate and calculate in your head what he wants from you. Revenge? A very big possibility. A reasonable course of action, for sure. You made his life a living Hell without having the excuse of revenge to do so. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This demanding 2-D tickles your spine with ice, so it’s only natural to be suspicious. If he had asked, you wouldn’t be thinking about the motives behind this. Just a nice, friendly chat. Right? And a part of you knows 2-D isn’t the hateful revenge type, but people change under unfortunate circumstances. And people want those who have hurt them to suffer just as much. So, what’s his fucking deal? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You follow him into the living room regardless, because the one thing that frightens you more than this demanding 2-D is the idea of not knowing what will happen next. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s silent, no words out of you or him as you sit on the leather couch. You twiddle your fingernails against the leather just to hear a sound in this suffocating silence he’s imposed on the two of you. 2-D stands aimlessly for a moment, probably having more thoughts, before moving to the fireplace and striking a match, letting the wood burst with flame. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You stare into the bright orange and red, watching the tiny blue hue in the center flicker around. Blue is the hottest part of the flame. Ironic. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D stands over it watching as well, his back turned to you. If he’s waiting or just thinking, you truly cannot tell. He’s not crafty enough to leave you totally blank on being able to read his facial expressions, therefore leaving you totally hopeless on how to read </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  His over sized orange shirt blends into the orange flame, masquerading himself to you. When you blink, all you see are glimpses to the past on Plastic Beach where you held his hair back and let him vomit all the Xanax left in the world. So, you keep your eyes peeled open, even though the continued staring at the light begins to make them water in pain. Pain. There it is again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D used to stand like that out on the cluttered garbage shore, staring off into the distance and thinking of things to say. Actually, that was giving him credit; he wasn’t thinking at all, because what else was there to think about that wasn’t miserable for him? There wasn’t very much for a hostage on the most isolated place on Earth to think about that didn’t fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>suck</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It was a contagious habit, really. You picked up on it when you had nothing good to think about and the hurt got too much. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The fire crackles and breaks the wall of silence between the two of you. 2-D mirrors the noise, giving it his own sigh that sounds like it carries the weight of bricks. You’ve heard that sigh before as well. It was the sigh at dinner, the few times you’d let him eat with you on that cursed island. It was that sigh when he finally stopped emptying his guts of the poison he consumed. It was the sigh of when he awkwardly patted your heaving back from a good crying session you shared with him. Those sighs only existed on Plastic Beach, but sure enough, they found their way back to him whenever he was with you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He laughs sickly for a moment, like an old man on his deathbed, before speaking. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do you remember our trip to Jamaica?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yes, you wanted to respond immediately. Yes, you remember Jamaica. You still look back on Jamaica quite fondly. You remember the sun kissing your biceps as you played in the ocean with 2-D, whose smile was as wide as the Grand Canyon. You remember how sweet and delectable crisps tasted after you got out of the ocean with him, him laughing as you fake moaned at its deliciousness. You remember staying up till midnight and giggling hysterically with 2-D over his stupid childhood troubles he always got himself into. You remembered sharing a hotel room with him without wanting to strangle him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You remember the juvenile penises you drew in the sand and 2-D’s snickers as he joked that the smaller ones belonged to some bastards at the record company. You remember how you convinced him to buy an embarrassingly cheap speedo at some tourist cash grab store, and you remember laughing so hard you almost fell down when his balls peaked through at the bottom. You remember the play fights and the parasailing and the pretty dark skinned ladies who enjoyed your company and his. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You remember being dared by 2-D to climb a coconut tree, and then falling on your arse shortly after reaching the top. You remember how pure his laugh sounded compared to the one he just gave you. And you remember laughing with him and snapping that happy photo in Rise of the Ogre, 2-D’s pink stupid floaty making you laugh even more. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yes, you remember, but it didn’t feel like it ever happened to you. You felt like a voyeur again, or this time, a peeping tom. You fantasized from a distance, looking through a window to see something you could never get your hands on. At least, not again. Not ever again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“My favorite part of that Jamaica trip was when you suggested something I never would have expected you to do. You’re a selfish old git most of the time, but you weren’t one there. You wanted to help clean up garbage on the beach. So I helped out, cos that’s the right thing to do, and you wanted to do it. And when you were cleanin’ all that garbage, I saw something in you. It was like a light that I’ve never seen in you before. It was so…. Innocent. And for the first time I really saw under all that dirt was a guy who wanted to make a change. And help.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Yes, you remembered cleaning sea glass from the beach, plucking every ounce of garbage you could find from the shore and placing it into a recycle bin. The truth is, you don’t know why you did it. It just was something you wanted to do. You didn’t like the garbage on the shore, you detested those who littered. Because it was such a beautiful, sacred place on Earth, the beaches of Jamaica. Silk soft sand, spacious blues, crystal lagoons. And you didn’t like how tourists disrespected its beauty. It was offensive to you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That’s why you did it. You could have spent more time drinking and fucking, but you wanted to preserve Jamaica’s beauty and richness of its life. You honestly didn’t think 2-D would have remembered that; it wasn’t a big deal to you at the time, and you didn’t think he thought too deeply into it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The rope around your throat tightens till tears like needles prick at the corners of your eyes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You get up from the couch quietly and sit next to him near the fireplace, watching the flame burn, sharing no words. 2-D doesn’t look at you when you flicker your eyes to see if he’s staring. He doesn’t look at you at all. He stares at the hottest part of the flame, the blue. Part of you wishes you could just pay it all back to him now by sticking your hand into the blue. An eye for an eye, but you’re just giving up your hand instead. It would make sense; burned from the color of his hair, from your favorite color. The hand who’s slapped him so many times would be shriveled up like a prune. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What happened to make that light in you go away?”, he asks sincerely, and back is the timid 2-D you’re used to. Not entirely though. You feel his cold, judging stare ghost around the curve of your jawline and down to your right hand. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Fame made that light go away. He got more attention than you ever did. And you were jealous. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Everything came so naturally to you”, you start and desperately try to suck the tears back, but they fall and plop on the fireplace regardless. You still don’t look him in the eye. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You just had something I didn’t and could never have. And I didn’t like that. And I know -” ,you cut yourself off with a strangled gasp that fist fights with the hot air around you, swallow it back down with an insatiable urge to cough, and then continue - “I know it wasn’t fair because you didn’t really do anything wrong besides just exist. And I - I probably don’t deserve any closure or forgiveness from you. But I am -” There’s an ugly pause and sniffle. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I really am sorry.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>2-D’s head perks up like an owl when he hears you apologize, something you’ve never really done in life. You see his eyes blink at the speed of light without even looking at him. When you do conjure the courage to look him in the eyes, his own are watery and in its blurriness, you can see your jumbled reflection. You look like a Picasso painting in them, but when you look past the wet, you see his red pupils shine directly at you. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, you don’t really deserve my forgiveness. You put me through Hell. But still - I’d like to pick up sea glass with you in Jamaica again.” He giggles and lets you see that goofy smile from before. A glowing warmth swims in your veins.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> “Can we make a date for next summer?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It fucking shocks you how easily he’s letting you waltz into his arms. You haven’t been forgiven, but he didn’t resist your apology. Not like how Noodle or Russel would have. What if your apology wasn’t genuine? It was, but what if it wasn’t? How fucking easily does he do it? You’d ruin his life and make him homeless if he even did one thing you did to him. So, how? How is this humanly possible? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s just something you’ll never understand. Like rocket science, or fishing for fun, or Muse’s popularity. It kills you to not know. But you’ve come to accept all these things you didn’t know, because it just </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Your heart thumps and whistles with the wind outside when his question truly dawns on you, because it’s just so </span>
  <em>
    <span>hopeful</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Like standing in the eye of the hurricane. Like the color blue. Your favorite. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that,” you whisper out just loud enough for him to hear your agreement. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When others ask you why your favorite color is blue, you’ll secretly add Stuart Pot to the list. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>thank you micky farm lesbian for giving me the murdoc's favorite color is blue because those were the colors that were flashing during his first concert headcanon.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hi! It's been about two months since my last upload? I know this is different from what I usually write, but after Do Ya Thing, there was lots of unexplored potential in telling these character's stories, and I wanted to do them justice, specifically with Murdoc who never got his character arc wrapped up smoothly. </p><p>If you want to contact me, my twitter is @artdisease and my tumblr is machinebitez. Thank you for reading and thank you for the support. Kudos are appreciated &lt;3.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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